The Hunger Games
by theapexpredat0r
Summary: Welcome to the 83rd Annual Hunger Games, Matthias Garetty and Andrew Detmer. May the odds be ever in your favor. AU, HG/Chronicle crossover.
1. Chapter 1

Reaping Day is Matt's worst nightmare.

Not that it's anyone's favorite day, really, or a time that they prepare for weeks in advance, at least not with a positive connotation. The preparing is done with tiptoed footfalls and nights spent lying in bed awake staring at the ceiling. It's done during breakfast when every child between the ages of twelve and eighteen watches their parents with troubled eyes, noting the way that their spoons shake on the way to their mouths and that they don't initiate conversation. It's done in gleaming training arenas in Districts One, Two, and Four, where parents have learned to turn off the affection they feel towards their children at a very young age so that when the kids are brought into the Games, there is no sadness because they have no emotional connection.

That is how the preparing is done, and Matt hates the time of year when his mother falls silent and doesn't answer him right away when he speaks to her.

It's his last year, he thinks. His last year. After this, he's out forever. He's eighteen, he will no longer have his name in the Reaping Ball after this year and he can relax. He has no siblings, no one to look out for, and he and his family can go on living the way that they always have, that they always had before he was twelve years old, except without the worry that he will ever be in the Games again.

There are so many names. He can't be the one that's picked. He's only in there ten or eleven times. He took the tessarae a few years ago when his family was having an especially bad year, then again last year in secret, against his mother's wishes. They were starving and she wouldn't let him take tessarae but he could see the way her eyes were dull and lifeless. She was hungry. She was not used to being hungry and it scared Matt and so he took the tessarae. District 5 wasn't supposed to see that side of poverty, but the Capitol had been up in arms about something that had happened inside, some kind of shortage of one of the Districts' supplies and so all the Districts except One, Two, and Four had taken the hit.

She'd exploded on him when she found out.

"_Matt, how could you do this? How could you go directly against my orders and taken that goddamned tessarae out? I swear on my grave, I'll go to the Peacekeepers right now and ask them to retract the offer-"_

"_Mom! Settle down, it's okay. It's okay, Mom. I'm seventeen. Reaping Day is coming up. I bet you a million dollars I'm not going to be picked."_

She'd screamed at him some more and he'd let her and then gone up to his room and let his father calm her down. And when Reaping Day came, she wouldn't speak to him. And he waited with his breath held to see if he would be picked after all, and he wasn't, and when he came back home that day his mother held him so tight he could hardly breathe and she wept into his hair and whispered that she was sorry, she was sorry for screaming at him and she was sorry that she had let him go to the Reaping without even telling him that she loved him because what if he had been picked? And then she would get thirty or forty seconds with him before he went off to the Capitol and that was not enough time for a mother and a son to say their last words to each other.

He had gone back to work and forgotten about the whole thing, or tried to, anyway. He caught his mother watching him sometimes when she thought he didn't see. Making sure that he was still there, even though it would be absurd for him to have gone anywhere. She just wanted to make sure he was always there because she had come so close to losing him without being able to apologise.

And now it's Reaping Day again and Matt is actually in a good mood for once.

He's mulled over it for a very long time. After all, there's no way for him not to be thinking about it. After Reaping Day there are about two or three days when you feel intense relief that you haven't been picked and for a while everything seems alright. You forget about the Games because they take the tributes off and there's no word of them until they do their interviews and their tribute parade and so you can take your mind off of it for a little bit. You can go back to your normal life and pretend like everything's alright. But then it creeps back into your mind. You remember that there's always next year. And you start dreading every passing day again and it's always in your thoughts. What if it's me this time. What am I supposed to do if they call my name and I have to make the walk to the Justice Building and stand up on that stage. Fuck that, what am I supposed to do in the Games? How do I make people like me so they send me gifts and how am I supposed to even survive for a god damned minute when something like this has just happened to me, how do I even begin to process the fact that I am in the Games and that there is a three point eight percent chance of me getting out of here alive? How do I even begin to understand that my life is not protected, that I am not entitled to my survival, and that I am probably going to die in the next few days, if not right away at the Cornucopia?

So Matt has been thinking about it every second of every day. It is the background soundtrack to his world. He thinks about the Capitol and he thinks about the silver train he sees pull into District 5 every year and take the tributes away. He thinks about the interviews he's seen with past tributes and how very beautiful the one girl three years ago looked with her custom-made silver dress with the gold lining all over it, made to resemble a power plant theme, or a gear, or something like that. He didn't know, he just knew it represented District 5 perfectly and it was the first time he was ever proud of the tributes from his district. He prayed for her to win. He wanted it so badly. Her face was always set in this expression that made him understand just how determined she was to get back home alive.

He remembered that she did so well in the Games. Her interviews had gone flawlessly and she'd played up the fact that she had an older brother that had died in the Games when she was very young, and that she was going to avenge him. She'd been so elegant in her rage. He'd watched the sparks inside her come alive. She'd made it out of the Cornucopia with some kind of blowtorch that made fireballs, small ones, and she'd taken down seven tributes just by hiding around the network of caves that the arena had been and letting them loose.

And then she'd teamed up with District 4. It had been so beautiful. He'd been a boy that didn't want to team up with his own Careers and he'd decided she was valuable, and he'd taught her things. How to swim. How to catch fish. Which fish were edible and which ones had skin so rough they were like sandpaper and which ones were poisonous and could make you vomit up everything you'd eaten that day and the one before it. (They'd done this to one of the tributes and Matt had watched in awe that two people could learn so much from each other. The District 5 girl had been the one to catch the poisonous fish and swap it out with a normal one and when the tribute had unknowingly eaten the poisonous fish and ended up going into shock from the damage done to his system, District 4 had been so proud of District 5. They'd hugged for what seemed like forever and Matt could see the sun shining in District 4's face.)

But then he'd turned on her. They were the last tributes besides a male from District 9 and a female from District 2. And he'd told her that they were going to split up, that they'd each take on a different tribute and see what it came to, and they'd hugged one last time for posterity's sake. They had spent most of the Games touching in at least some way.

She'd sighed during the hug, and the whole Capitol thought it was this romantic thing and that the two of them were in love, that one of them would probably be killed by the tribute they went off to face and that fate would have its hand and they wouldn't have to kill each other. You could hear people swooning in front of their screens and you could tell the people who were betting on District 4 were kind of hoping that maybe District 5 would win if 4 couldn't, and vice versa. It was this whole big thing and everyone was in love with the idea of love.

And then District 5 dropped to the floor of the cave and District 4 grinned smugly in the darkness.

No one knew what had happened at first. District 5 was dead, that was the only thing that anyone knew, and the cannon went off and the hovercraft appeared and took her away. Everyone was in an uproar. People in the Capitol were drinking themselves into oblivion from confusion because that was the only way they knew how to delay their emotions for a little bit, and District 5 was crying that night. Matt remembered going to sleep with tears in his eyes because his district's tribute had been too beautiful and too pure and too lovely to die, but she did anyway. "It's not fair," he'd cried into his pillow. He was fifteen and he shouldn't have been crying because only kids cried. But it wasn't fair. And he realised slowly that it didn't matter. Because life didn't care what was fair and what wasn't. There was no rule that said that District 5 had to win because it was the fair thing to happen. There was no law protecting her from death.

The story came out the next day. Caesar Flickerman and Claudius Templesmith looked as if this had been the best Games they'd narrated in years, and it was. Caesar explained everything with a barely suppressible grin.

District 4 had taken something in the Cornucopia at the start of the games that no one recognized, so no one worried about it. It was this little box, and everyone assumed it had a flask of water in it, or a flashlight, or something that wasn't a big deal. They'd put it out of their minds. Really it had been a box filled with tiny pins, each clear in color and barely visible. As they played through the flashbacks, it was revealed that every time District 4 and District 5 had touched in what had seemed like a display of affection, District 4 had pushed another pin into District 5. She hadn't known. It was impossible for her to feel them and he had disguised it as a pat on the arm, or a rub on the back. They were impossible for her to see, too, and so she never removed them because she never knew they were there. There were twenty-six of them, as was the magic number in the Capitol, and District 4 had pushed the twenty-sixth into District 5 as they embraced. No one knew exactly how the pins affected her, but they knew that they had killed her. And District 4 had been planning it the whole time.

He'd gone home the victor after taking on the District 9 boy. District 2 had been attacked by some terrible creature lurking in the cave waters. It had blended in with the wall. She'd never known it was there and while she was filling her thermos with water it reached up, grabbed her wrist, and brought her down with it. It had been so terrible to see from the point of view of the camera underneath the water and watch what she must have been able to see. The sunlight from outside of the cave touching the surface of the water as she drowned. Hope so close, but inaccessible. And District 9 had been so easy. He'd just been lucky. That's all. He'd gotten lucky shots and used evasion, and when District 4 found him, he'd tried to fight back. He'd thrown the daggers he'd picked up at the Cornucopia but they had mostly been used to gut fish and it was all too easy for District 4 to sink the daggers right back into 9's body.

That had been the first time he'd questioned the Games.

"Matt, please don't glare at your breakfast. It's not becoming."

Matt looks up. His mom's across the table and she's trying to look serious but she's sort of laughing. He doesn't question her – he probably looked pretty stupid staring angrily at the oatmeal in his bowl, and he starts to laugh a little, too. It's okay, he tells himself, you're eighteen and you're not going to get picked. And he believes it almost wholeheartedly. He was just reminiscing, he tells his mom, which is true. He was thinking about the Games, about the past victors and the past arenas. Just out of curiosity of this year, he says. He's eager to see what they have planned for this time. Neither of them support the Games, but they go along with them the best that they can and try to have as much fun as the Capitol seems doing it. Matt talks strategies with his father and both of them make disappointed sounds when their favorite tribute makes a bad move, and then they talk about how it could have been fixed, and it's fun, at least once the corpses have been cleared off of the screen.

And Matt's mother, she comes alive during the interviews. She holds her hand in front of her mouth to hide the fact that it's hanging open when she sees the different fashions that the tributes are dressed up in. She loves the beautiful silken dresses and she just about loses her mind when the boys wear suits themed with their district. I'm going to get you in a suit like that someday, Matt, she tells him, and and Matt's dad says hopefully it won't be under those circumstances, and they all laugh. And Matt tells her only in her dreams will he wear a suit like that because you sure as hell can't have fun playing around in the dirt with a suit and everything is okay for a little bit. They're able to forget the horrible reality of the Games.

Matt wonders if that's how everyone else does it, or if they just accept it by now.

* * *

The crowd's full of all kinds of people and all kinds of emotions.

There's the older kids, like Matt. The seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds that are confident because they know they are almost at the end of their Reapings. They've been lucky enough to avoid all of them so far, so who says they can't go another one or two times the same way? Then there are the fourteen- through sixteen-year-olds. Their eyes are hardened. They want to have the confidence that the older kids have, they want to think they're safe, but they know. They know there is every possibility of them being picked, even though the older kids have their names in more times. There are so many of the fourteen- through sixteen-year-olds and the odds are definitely not in their favor. And then there's the youngest ones, the twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, and they're absolutely terrified. They've spent so much time preparing for this. They are all dressed their very best with their hair done up nice and they've all taken baths with new soap before they came to the Reaping because god damn it if they weren't going to look their best in case they ended up getting reaped. And they don't want to listen to how uncommon it is for a twelve- or thirteen-year-old to get picked – all demographics point to a more fifteen- through seventeen-year old age range, as there's always more of them somehow – they just know that this is dangerous and this is scary and they do not want to be here. So their eyes are the biggest and it hurts just looking at them. Some of them are even afraid of the preliminaries, the Peacekeepers taking their information and their blood sample, and it's terrifying to know that that is something that scares them so badly when it is about to get much, much worse.

Matt stands there in the middle of several boys he's seen around the district. District 5 is somewhat of a small city or a large suburb, albeit barely any Capitol-style buildings and only a few stores. Matt prefers to stay close to his family's house but he's ventured out sometimes to see the other kids from the neighborhood hanging out together. He's gone into the "city", or what passes for one in Five, here and there. Most of the boys around him are from farther into the city, but he's talked to them on several occasions.

"Are you gonna be okay?" asks a boy named Costly from beside him. Costly's one of the boys that Matt sees more often, usually when he goes into the city to trade for supplies he needs for the family, food and firewood and so on.

Matt nods, trying to reassure himself. It's okay. It's okay. He will not get picked. He stands taller, the confidence building in his chest. "Yeah, it's cool. I'm just, you know. Nervous."

"You shouldn't be, man. You're out of here after today. No more worryin' about the Games or anythin'. Just wait twenty minutes and you'll be out of the Reaping for good."

Hearing it out of someone else's mouth just builds the confidence in Matt's chest. It makes it more real, because someone else has noticed his opinion and agreed with it without even hearing it, so it's not like he talked Costly into it. Costly came up with that opinion all on his own. And Matt believes him. He will not get picked. He is out of here in twenty minutes. He feels himself smiling. He's fairly certain no one's ever smiled before the actual Reaping. Maybe afterwards, when the eighteen-year-olds clap each other on the back and congratulate each other on getting out of the Games for life.

It's pretty obvious when Agrippa Trechér comes onto the stage.

Agrippa has been the escort for District 5 for as long as Matt can remember. He's only been alive for eighteen years, though, and he doesn't remember much before he was ten years old. Besides, she looks pretty young. Thirty at the oldest, he thinks, although she's from the Capitol and who knows how much surgery she could have done to appear younger. Her voice is what makes Matt stick with the guess that she's young, though. It's high and melodic and bright and even with that thick Capitol accent, the sing-song she presents her words with and the way she carefully enunciates each of her words, he can still see her as not much older than a schoolgirl.

She's done this thing every year where she's had the projectors go dark and the lights on the front of the Justice Building go out. And then the spotlights come on and she more or less prances through the doors like she should be on every Capitol news segment from six p.m. to eight p.m. simply for being her. She's just this exploding fireball of energy and Matt has always found it refreshing to watch her. She's the kind of person that makes the Games what they are.

Predictably enough, she does it this year, too, and the crowd goes wild because they know that's what they're supposed to do. The older boys each year usually do catcalls and jump around like idiots and do all kinds of crazy things because they can enjoy it now. They're more or less safe, even though there have been a few years where an older boy has gotten picked and it's been a slap in the face because he thought he was homefree. And then he has to stand up there in his humiliation, going from cheering to being so incredibly terrified in the span of three minutes.

Agrippa announces herself, as always, and goes through the usual spiel about how honorable the Games are, how the victor is showered with praise and adoration as he comes back home, about this and that pumping up the Games like you should be fucking grateful to be in them instead of wanting to curl up in a corner and die because it's easier than dealing with the reality of the situation.

She reaches into the reaping ball. Matt's confidence hasn't swayed even one little bit. He starts to move his arm to elbow Costly and tell him how great it would be if it was that kid Yitz that's always bothering everyone in town with his constant tagging along to try and act like an older kid, and he gets his arm about halfway up and he hears, "The male tribute from District 5 for the 83rd Annual Hunger Games is...Matthias Garetty."


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I haven't had wifi for like...two weeks now. So I apologise for the long wait. I'm uploading this at my church where there is MUCH faster wifi...right now, I just tether my phone but obviously my phone's 3G is like really sucky compared to the wifi anywhere else in modern civilization. So updates should be maybe once a week, depending on whether my phone feels like being fast or not. Sorry for the wait. This chapter has been sitting here for like a week now, all finished and ready to go. :(**

**Carolinefdq – **Thank you. :) I definitely do plan to continue it all the way to the end.

**Pia-Balette – **Haha, thanks, sweetie. To be honest, I do this with a lot of movies I see in the theatre – while I'm watching it, if I really like it, I tell myself that I'm going to do a crossover with whatever fandom I'm really into at the time, and stuff like this is born. I've already had a bunch of ideas for Chronicle crossovers with good movies. ;) I'm so happy you're enjoying it.

**Apex-predator14 – **I definitely plan on continuing it. ;) Thank you!

The way it gets suddenly quiet is forever etched into Matt's memory.

He remembers how just a second ago he was thinking of those eighteen-year-old boys that sometimes got picked and had to walk slowly up to the stage with the realization that they would probably never come out, that the freedom and joy they had felt a few seconds beforehand would never again be felt. And his heart turns to lead and drops into his shoes when he hears his name called out. Costly looks at him with wide eyes, but there is no empathy. Pity, maybe, that Matt has to endure this. But right now he's too busy being overjoyed that he's out of the Games for another year, and all he has is this next year and he'll be home-free. And meanwhile Matt's staring at the stage hoping, praying that the name was wrong. That he's not the one that was picked, that he was just hallucinating, but then Agrippa calls it out again. "Matthias Garetty? Where are you?" And someone from behind shoves him and he moves forward a few inches and that's enough to get him going. He walks through the crowd and out into the middle of the aisle and he doesn't say a word as he does. His head swims. He feels nauseous. He wants to turn the other way and bolt, leave District 5, disappear into the little bit of woods outside of the district and then head for the hills. District 6, 7, 8, 9. 10, 11, 12. 13. Anywhere he can go to get away from what's happening right here in 5.

But soon enough he finds himself stepping up the stairs onto the stage of the Justice Building and Agrippa is coming over and congratulating him on being the lucky one to participate in such a fine ritual. And Matt stares at a rock on the ground in front of the stage and doesn't look up. This is not honorable. This is not something he should be proud of. He unwillingly played a death roulette. There is no special ability or talent about him. He's just the lottery winner, and whoever heard of someone winning the lottery because they were talented?

He stands there numbly while the female tribute from District 5 is chosen. Emery Selty. There's a collective gasp in the female side of the crowd because Emery has four sisters that she's supposed to be taking care of. Her older brother, the only one in her family older than her, is dying to take her place. You can see the way that his legs are restless, the way that he has to hide the emotion on his face, because he can't volunteer for her. There has to be a male and a female tribute for each district, no matter what, and as Emery comes up to take the place beside Matt, he can see Emery's brother let a tear slip.

"Congratulations," Matt tells Emery bitterly. Not at her, it's not her fault. At the Capitol. At the Games. At everything that makes Panem what it is.

Emery understands. She's sixteen but she's smart. She's had to mature quickly, considering that she's got no parents. Hers died early due to some rare disease no one knew the cause of, leaving her and her brother to look after their little siblings and pull in the income. She lets a sarcastic smile quirk her mouth up. "To you as well," she tells him.

Agrippa figures that if people are smiling, things must be going well, and so she launches into another ad-libbed speech about how District 5 is going to win this year or her name isn't Agrippa Trechér. She's kind of a free spirit, Matt is seeing more and more, and she doesn't really play by the Capitol's more insignificant rules. She's only supposed to have twenty minutes on the stage including the time it takes for the reaping. It's already been fifteen. But she goes on for another fifteen about the rich history of District 5, about her time as a young girl watching the Games on television, and basically everything she can think of relating to District 5 and the Games at the same time. A Peacekeeper finally comes over and tells her quietly that her time is up and she needs to get the tributes into the Justice Building as soon as possible, and she sighs and does her farewells, which last another three minutes.

Once they're in the Justice Building, Agrippa takes the opportunity to tell them how fancy the Capitol is, how much they're going to love it, how they'll be pampered until they can't stand it. "It's not a bad two weeks," she says. "The tributes before you have loved it. Sure, they have to come to an end sometime, but why not enjoy yourself while you can?"

"Because this whole thing is bullshit," says Emery.

The Peacekeepers flanking them pull up their weapons.

"Relax," Emery tells them, rolling her eyes. "I'm not going to hurt her. God. Put the weapons down."

Agrippa eyes the Peacekeepers, nodding almost invisibly. They lower their weapons and Matt realizes just how hard it's going to be to kill the other tributes. Maybe not the Careers, who've been trained for this, but the tributes from District 5 and beyond are going to be tough. Because he knows they are enduring the same hell as he is, and he knows the fear that they are feeling, and it will be hard to separate the tributes from his own feelings, his own experience here in the Games.

It will be especially hard to kill Emery.

He wonders why he thinks he's going to be the one to kill her and not the other way around. She's probably got more experience fighting. There's nothing saying that he's going to be the one to kill her and not the opposite. In fact, he thinks, he's probably got barely any chance killing her. He's got to learn to resign himself to the fact that he is probably not going to make it out of here alive. How is he supposed to defeat the Careers? How is he supposed to defeat, at the very least, five or six other tributes?

Suddenly things are looking a whole hell of a lot worse than when they walked through the doors.

He'd been on a kind of adrenaline high. Hadn't been able to think straight or realise exactly what this meant. But now, it's catching up to him. And he's terrified.

"We're gonna die," he moans.

Emery rolls her eyes. "Here we go. I'm not surprised, really. In fact I'm surprised he didn't go into this cycle of spiraling depression earlier. I was waiting for him to freak the fuck out and pass out right there on the stage of the Justice Building." The understanding that had been in her eyes earlier is gone. She's already started to distance herself from her fellow tribute so that she doesn't have to feel anything when she kills him, or when he's killed. It would be best for Matt to do that as well, he thinks, but it's so tough. He's stuck in the mindset that he and Emery are going to be a team, and they're going to kill all the other tributes, but then what? He hasn't thought that far ahead. And now Emery doesn't seem like she's going to be too into the idea of teamwork.

"Matthias, relax," says Agrippa. "It's really fine. I mean, if you think you're going to be killed in the Games, then just enjoy yourself in the Capitol for the two weeks you have. It's really not anything to worry about. Have the most fun you can, that's what I always say."

Of course that's what she always says. She doesn't have to worry about getting reaped. She can live her life in comfort that the Capitol is always going to pamper her because she's an escort, that she'll always have enough food, and not only enough food but the _finest_ food. And they'll always redo her hair in different shades like she has every time she attends a reaping, and they'll always take care of those pretty little tattoos she's got going up and down her arms that move when she's excited, and she will always be the Capitol's little pet.

They're led into opposite rooms down the hall. Each room is about the size of Matt's bedroom at home and completely free of any furniture except one nightstand in the corner, which looks like it serves absolutely no purpose, considering the lack of a lamp or any sort of other complimentary furniture on it.

"Your families are going to come and say their goodbyes," Agrippa explains, not looking concerned at all about it. "They'll be here shortly. Until then, please just stay in your rooms and make yourselves comfortable."

She shuts their doors, and Matt wonders how the hell he's supposed to make himself comfortable when there isn't a goddamn thing in the room.

He doesn't have to wonder for long, though. The door opens about two minutes later, and Matt's mother comes rushing into the room, throwing her arms around her son. Matt has only a second to see the horrified and scared shitless expression on her face before it's buried in his shoulder as she cries. The only thing he can do is to wrap his arms around her and close his own eyes, memorizing the feel of her. This is the last time he's going to see her, he's almost sure of it.

"Mom," he says, and she's pretty much wailing now. She doesn't have much to say, she's too busy crying and Matt knows exactly what she wants to say. It's conveyed easily enough through her tears.

"It's okay," he tells her a few seconds later, "it's okay. Even if I don't come out, Mom, it's gonna be okay. You gotta move on. You gotta realise nothing's going to change this and you have to accept it and you have to move on with your life. Okay? And there's always the chance I do win, so try to think about that when you watch me on the network. Got it? Can you do that for me? Remember how Dad and I always watch the Games on the network and we talk strategy and stuff? I can totally make it out of the Games if I just, you know, apply it in real life. So just, like, just think about that. Dad will be there for you, too. It's gonna be okay."

After he and his mom are finished and she tells him "I love you" over and over and over again, his father has a turn with him. It's kind of a more formal meeting. Matt understands the gravity of this situation and he looks his father in the eye and sincerely tells him that he will do his best to get out of the Games alive and use everything he has been taught and everything he has seen on the network. And his father nods and he stays so stone-still and sturdy and then he brings Matt into a hug and Matt can feel his father shaking. He's scared. Just as scared as Matt. And the gravity of the situation becomes even heavier as Matt realises that his own fucking _father _is terrified. And he doesn't know if he's really going to be able to get out alive.

It's only a few minutes that he has to say goodbye to his parents, and then they're taken away and he can hear his mother crying down the hall until the doors of the Justice Building are shut and Agrippa comes to collect him and Emery.

They're on the train in less than five minutes.

Matt and Emery arrive in the doorway and they stop dead and look around.

"It's so beautiful," Emery whispers.

Agrippa's pride radiates from behind them, and Matt can feel her stand just a little taller despite the fact that she had nothing to do with the train or the food on it or any of the design. All she had to do was get on it and it was already prepared for her. But it doesn't matter, it's not like they're going to be here for more than a day anyway, and so the two of them move into the cabin and explore, lifting up trays of things and seeing what's under them, looking through drawers and on shelves and under the tables. Matt takes a crystal cup and fills it with ice, then pours some of what looks sort of like alcohol but with a dark pink color into it. He takes a sip. It tastes so good he's almost seeing spots at the edges of his vision.

"Ohhh," he whispers. "Do they always drink this at the Capitol?"

Agrippa takes a look at the drink, coming over to stand beside Matt. "Oh, yes. This is a very popular party drink. It's quite expensive, too. I'm surprised that they chose to include it this year. See? All the odds are looking to be in your favor."

She's just saying it to make herself feel better. Matt knows this and somehow manages to forgive her for it. He knows he's not really the one to decide whether she should be forgiven or not, but he figures he has a little bit of right, considering his situation and the fact that he's managing to not go insane from it. Somehow.

Agrippa leaves Emery and him alone and tells them that she's going to go fetch their mentor, who is supposed to help them devise a strategy to win the Games. District 5's mentor for this year would have been that beautiful girl that Matt was rooting for, if she'd lived. She would have been the most recent and therefore would have been tasked with helping Matt and Emery survive. As it is, their mentor turns out to be a twentysomething girl with long curls the color of midnight, and she walks into the cabin with her shoulders back, her head held high, and no trace of a smile on her face. Matt remembers hearing about her. She won the Games ten years ago, when Matt was too young to really understand everything that the Games symbolized the way he does now. He remembers her name is Remainder, ironically. She has always hated the name, though. He remembers watching reruns of the televised interviews from the Capitol, where she told Caesar Flickerman that her name implied that she would just wait everything out and somehow manage to be the last tribute, but that was the exact opposite of the strategy she was planning. She told him she was going to kill every last tribute in a frenzy of white-hot anger until she was the last one standing.

Not surprisingly, that was exactly what she managed to do.

Remainder sits down on the couch across from the two District 5 tributes. She's spent a lot of time in the Capitol, and it shows. She's been taught how to sit and how to stand the right way, the way that makes a person look like they've been doing it all their life. She's been taught the right way to speak and the right way to act. The way that makes people listen to her. The way that makes people think that she is from the Capitol.

There is nothing left of District 5 in her.

"I don't want to do this," says Matt.

Remainder rolls her eyes. "No one wants to do this, stupid. But you're going to have to because you got reaped and I know it sucks but just try to bear with me and I'll see if we can manage to get either of you out in one piece."

"Not that," Matt tells her. "I just...I don't want to do this. Not with you."

"Matthias," Emery snaps.

"You're not part of us anymore. You decided to become part of the Capitol when you took what they offered you after the Games. You barely came back here. You spent all your time in the Capitol when you could have been living in the Victors' Village and gotten everything you ever wanted. But you stayed there, with _them_, and you never came back for us. You never came back and helped us out. Did you know there was a famine last year?"

Emery makes a frustrated sound.

"Yes," says Remainder, very evenly. "I knew there was a famine. There was news about it in the Capitol."

"Of course there was. And of course that's where you got your information from. How could I have thought any different?" Matt gives a bitter laugh. "But you didn't come back, did you? You stayed all nice and warm in your cozy Capitol and buddied up to people who couldn't really give a fuck about you. It's because of that Capitol boyfriend you have, isn't it? You wanted to stay right next to him and you couldn't care less about what happened back in your own district. And all the Capitol people loved you and let you stay there as long as you wanted and you didn't give a fuck about us."

Remainder doesn't say anything to that. She doesn't look guilty, though, she looks pretty pissed off if Matt's going to be perfectly honest about it. Like Matt doesn't have the fucking right to accuse her of anything. It's a controlled anger, hidden behind her white-colored irises all done up from cosmetic surgery. They tell the goddamn _time _if you look close enough. Matt wants to throw up just looking at her.

"You abandoned us," Matt says, stabbing a finger at her. "You left us to _die._"

"It doesn't matter now, since you're going to die anyway," Remainder fires back. Then she gets up and she leaves the cabin. Probably to go back to her room. Matt doesn't care where she goes. He can't stand to look at her.

Emery, meanwhile, is moaning and groaning about Matt's behavior. "I can't believe you. Did you really have to go and piss off the only chance we have of getting through the Games just because you felt like you needed to bring her to justice? So what if she abandoned us. I'd abandon us too if I was her! I wouldn't step a goddamn foot back in District 5 for the rest of my life if I had the chance!"

She gets up as well and moves to a different cabin.

Matt is left to wonder if he would ever step foot in District 5 in that situation either.


	3. Chapter 3

Remainder doesn't come out of her room for the rest of the ride.

Emery reluctantly joins Matt after trying to talk to Remainder that first afternoon. She doesn't look at Matt for the rest of the night, but she doesn't seem to be mad. Matt has the feeling that she's too tired to be mad. She's got that look in her eyes, the look that says that nothing is ever going back to normal again, and she might as well stop trying to act like she gives a shit because chances are she's probably going to die. Matt feels the same way, but he's trying to hide it, trying to be strong for everyone back home, and it's miserably failing.

When they pull up alongside the Capitol, Agrippa makes sure to come out and give them some instructions on how they are to act when they leave the train. The tributes are heralded almost as war heroes, she tells them, as celebrities, as something to be appreciated and beloved, so they're going to want to keep moving towards the hotel as fast as they can, even though there will be people on both sides of the street where they are walking that are going to be trying to reach out for them and get their autographs and everything they do to movie stars and such in the Capitol. Matt is starting to feel a little more comfortable. He likes the attention. He likes that they are going to help distract him from what he's really going into the Capitol for, and he likes that they are cheering for him. _For him. _Matthias Garetty from District 5 who never did anything in his life that had an impact, he's going to be put in the Games and there's going to be people that bet on him and it's going to be amazing to get the attention beforehand, where he can see it, where he's not huddled in the woods worrying about whether he's going to be stabbed through the heart or not.

He takes hold of Emery's hand, or at least tries to before she snatches it back.

"What's your problem?" she snaps, eyes narrowed at him, fire dancing in them.

"I...I just thought, you know...since there's gonna be crowds and everything..."

"They're not going to be let past the fucking barrier, stupid. You don't need to hold my hand."

Matt turns away from her. He tells himself he doesn't need this shit, that he's better than this and that Emery's just being a rude bitch, but it's difficult. He's not the type to be rejected often, not even romantically, just for little everyday things, and having this girl who's supposed to be in this with him together act so hostile toward him is confusing him and hurting his feelings. And it sounds so fucking wimpy when he thinks of it like that, like he's this little girl that you have to be so damn careful around because she's so sensitive, and it's not like that at all, he's just hurt. Hurt that she would be like that towards him when they're supposed to be working together.

Well, maybe they're only supposed to be working together in his mind.

After all, only one comes out.

Agrippa has them walk next to each other, though, not hand-in-hand but definitely looking like a tag team, and Matt is aware of every one of his bodily functions as he takes his first step off of the train and into the gleaming Capitol. He doesn't hear the screams and the cheers. He doesn't look around and take everything in. He's too busy just trying not to pass out.

Emery, on the other hand, has the same expression as he does, yet she's hardened. Her face isn't that way because she's trying to cover up the fact that she's scared as fuck. Her face is that way because she's been dealt hardships like this time and time again – maybe not so life-threatening but certainly with the same impact – and she's learned how to hide herself away from the world. How to make them believe that she is a warrior. And Matt admires her for that but at the same time he hates that she is so able to do it and he doesn't have a clue how to do it himself.

Slowly, as he makes his way down the path with Agrippa guiding him and news cameras following from the side, levitating and automated, and he begins to hear the cheering and the crowd feedback and he can hear his name and he can hear his district number. For once in his life, he has something to be proud of his district for. They've had victors, they've had Remainder and the other District 5 victors that live in the Victors' Village, and so the crowd has expectations, and god damn it all to hell if he's not going to make sure that their expectations are met.

The crowd and the applause only lasts for so long, though, and then they're in the hotel. And it's gorgeous. And Matt can't breathe. Emery ushers him along behind Agrippa. She's not going to be swayed by this facade of luxury. She is driven and focused now. Get in, be in the Games, and get out. That's the only thought in her mind right now and even though it should be the only thought in Matt's, too, his senses are bombarded by the beautiful sights around him.

"Be careful," Agrippa warns them, looking back over her shoulder. "You're going to see the other tributes for a minute or two. They come in through the other entrances...like the spokes of a wheel. And they're probably going to try and unnerve you and look all big and tough. Just ignore them. You don't know them and they don't know you, so they can't really pass judgment. Just pretend they're not even there."

She's right. When they get to what appears to be the main lobby of the hotel, the other twenty-four tributes show up as well out of doors situated all around the lobby in a circular fashion. Matt can't help it – he scans them with his eyes. He wants to know what he's up against. He's afraid, but he isn't going to show how afraid.

The majority of them look like him. Average size, average build, nothing really special. The Careers are easy to spot, the male tributes have bigger muscles and seem like running into them would be like running into a brick wall. They have confidence. They know that there is a better chance of them succeeding than anyone. The three female Careers are toned and lean and look like they could pick up any kind of weapon and be a pro at it. They have that Career confidence, too. They know that when it comes down to a fight, they'll be ready and able to take on anyone that comes after them. They know that the other tributes aren't going to all team up against them. That would be making enemies right off the bat, and then they'd be on the Careers' kill list.

Matt circles around to the outlying districts, Eleven, with its dark-skinned tributes and the way that they look like they're practically able to fly, like they could find their way out of any maze given to them. Twelve, looking terrified but standing tall, with their ability to create explosives...sometimes, anyway. Matt knows that people in Twelve don't get trained in their careers until they're eighteen, but some of the previous tributes had studied up beforehand, apparently, because there are quite a few years that dynamite-based explosives have been used, and not many people knew how to operate them. Thirteen, with their–

Matt holds his breath.

Thirteen has always been kind of a strange district, with their export of nuclear devices and weaponry, but these tributes are even stranger-looking. Or feeling, anyway, there isn't an outright physical appearance that is strange. And, as Matt studies them, he realizes it isn't even the female tribute, it's the male tribute alone that's making his blood feel like it's rushing faster through his veins. He's probably about the same age as Matt, a little skinnier, with less muscles and a hardened face, a face that says he knows the shit he's in and he isn't going to go down without a fight. Plain brown hair that forms into a ducktail at his neck, sort of falls in his eyes but doesn't really, and his legs moving restlessly, searching for an escape that will never come. He looks right at Matt with storm-grey eyes and then turns his head, scanning the other tributes as well, and the spell, or what felt like a spell anyway, is broken.

"Don't make a fool out of yourself," says Emery from beside him.

"What are you talking about?"

"I saw how you looked at Thirteen. Like a gaping fish. I swear to God. I don't know what you were thinking but if you're planning on wooing Thirteen's female tribute you have another thing coming."

Matt wants to laugh. He keeps it to himself. There's no romantic attraction, and certainly not to the female tribute. He just finds Thirteen's male interesting, that's all. He's never seen eyes that color before and he's never felt the rush he did when he looked at Thirteen. He doubts it's infatuation. Maybe a sort of respect, since Thirteen is such a different district with a different way of life and different culture and different-looking tributes with different abilities, but that's it. That is all that Thirteen holds for him.

He's pretty sure, anyway.

The escorts all rush their tributes to their floors soon after. Thirteen's is the farthest up, and so Matt watches him disappear into an unoccupied elevator with his female tribute and his escort, and in less than a second, the elevator takes off and Matt is left staring at the empty space it used to be at before his elevator shoots up as well, stopping on the fifth floor and allowing them out.

Agrippa brings them down the hall to where their room will be. "It's very beautiful," she says. "I doubt you've ever seen anything like it in your life. You can touch anything in it, and you can order room service whenever you want to, and you can mess the whole room up if you'd like, and the Avoxes will take care of it." She beams. This is obviously the sort of life she's used to, and Matt's not feeling like it's too bad of a life either. It will be nice to live in luxury for two weeks before he's thrown into a death match. His feelings for this place keep fluctuating. It's hard to hate a place that's so wonderful.

And when they do get into their room, Matt sees she's right. He can't even begin to describe it except that there are more colors than he's ever seen in one place in his life, and the couches look like he could just sit in them and he'd be able to fall asleep right away, and the windows reach from the ceiling to the floor, and there's so much Capitol stuff he can't even keep track of it all. The entire room is sleek and shiny with technology. He goes to the TV, turns it on, watches as the picture fades into view displaying the Capitol news, marvels that it's so much bigger than the one he owns back in District Five, which doesn't even pick up channels half the time and when it does, the signal is so bad he can't make out what's supposed to be happening on screen. He goes to the window, looks out, sees the Capitol spread out before him like the image inside of a snowglobe. He paces the room, picks up everything, inspects the little things, the way everything works, he's so into it. So into everything. And how could he not be, with what his district represents? He's spent his entire life learning how to make things turn on, how signals and frequencies work and how his district is responsible for powering the entire nation of Panem. The Capitol's got much more interesting things to work with than District Five does.

Emery's not as impressed. Sure, she's surprised. You can see it in her face. But she keeps her composure and strolls into the room, passing the luxury couches and the mini-fridge that Matt's sure is stocked with free food and beverages, passing the Avox servants who stand quietly at the corners of the room, their tongues ripped out, their heads down, and she goes upstairs into what Matt assumes are their sleeping quarters. He doesn't see her again until dinner.

He wonders if she's being too careful or if he's not being careful enough.

"Now this will be tough," Agrippa tells them at dinner, where there's so many foods laid out on the table that Matt doesn't know where to begin. He doesn't even know the names of half of them. Meats, breads, pastas, desserts, drinks in every color of the rainbow. Agrippa's still talking but Matt is only half-hearing her. Finally, she sighs in exasperation and says, "Alright, alright, start eating. But I expect you to listen to me as you're eating, alright? This is important stuff! You're going to have to remember this in the arena."

Matt's never been starving except for the one year there was the famine, but this food is a different story. As soon as he puts the first bite in his mouth, he feels like he could eat forever. It fills his stomach and makes him want more and more because it fills him so satisfyingly. It makes him feel like once he's done this meal, he's not going to want anything for the rest of the week.

He does make an effort to listen to Agrippa, though, because he wants to be remembered, but not as a fallen tribute.

"The arena is designed differently every year. So there's no guarantee that you're going to have any clues about what it's like. Even if you watch the Gamemakers for clues...they're probably not going to give any. So you have to stay on your toes! Anticipate everything and anything. It could be a desert, it could be an ocean. No one has any idea except the Gamemakers themselves because they program it. And don't try to weasel it out of them, either. They won't go for that, and if they do, they'll figure out some way to get you back when you're in the Games. And they can do a lot of horrible things, trust me."

Emery nods in understanding. "So what you're trying to say is...get the Gamemakers on our good side, but not in any way that's going to make them suspicious of what we're trying to do so that they don't come back later on and try to kill us."

"Exactly. That's where the score comes in, too. The score they give you after you perform for them." Agrippa takes a sip of one of the many multicolored drinks spread around the table. She doesn't get any on her face, unlike Matt who accidentally let it spill over the sides of the cup and down his face when he tried a full cup on the train. "If you get a good score, they're really going to like you. You know that already from watching the Games on your television every year, but I'm just reminding you. Unfortunately, a high score also means you're going to be a target for the Careers. Sort of a 'lesser of two evils' thing. I'd go for siding with the Gamemakers, considering they control the arena and the environment around you, but I'm not going to tell you what to do. You might think it's a better idea to stay out of the Careers' minds and take your chance with the Gamemakers. I'm not stopping you. It's–"

"Who do we ally with?"

Emery stares at Matt with poison eyes. "You really need to mind your matters," she snaps.

"I just want to know," Matt tells her.

Agrippa doesn't make any motion that says she agrees with one side or the other. She just looks at Matt with the same expression she's had all along and she says, "Allying is your own responsibility. I'm not going to tell you you should ally with one district or another. That's your mentor's job. She's been in the Games. She knows which districts are trustworthy and which ones aren't. If you asked me alone, though, I'd try and stay as far away from the Careers as possible. They don't seem like they're the best to ally with, especially since there are six of them and they have to turn on each other sooner or later. If you're not the strongest of them..." She gives Matt a once-over, making it painfully obvious that his skinny frame and lack of muscles don't bode well for him. "...then you're going to regret teaming up with them. It just means that you managed to escape their wrath when really you could have picked them off from a distance and made it easier for yourself. But I don't know the tributes every year. It could be a good idea to team up with them this year." She shrugs. "I'm really not sure."

"Matthias wants to team up with the girl from District 13," Emery says in distaste, looking at Matt out of the corner of her eye.

Agrippa sits up very straight, even straighter than she had been sitting before – which is painstakingly straight as every female in the Capitol is expected to sit, and even some of the males. This is a surprised sort of straight, though, and Matt is suddenly worried, tightening his fingers on his fork. Is there something wrong with allying with District 13? Emery doesn't know the truth of why he's even interested in District 13, and he's not about to say it's because the male tribute makes him kind of lightheaded and he doesn't know why. That sounds like the stuff in faery tales, not here and now. He'll keep it to himself.

"Oh," their escort says. "The female tribute?"

Matt doesn't say anything. He hates lying, so he lets Emery lie for him without her knowing it. She nods, and Agrippa looks almost relieved. Which doesn't make sense, because the male tribute from 13 doesn't look like he's anything special. To anyone but Matt, anyway.

"13 isn't a very good district to associate yourselves with," she continues.

"How come?" Not like Emery wants to team up with them, but Agrippa's got her intrigued now. Why does District 13 invoke such a reaction in someone who's trained to appear calm and collected at all times? Matt just wants to team up with the farthest outlying district even more now that they make his escort nervous. They must be very powerful if it's not recommended to team up with them. And bloodthirsty too, maybe. But Agrippa said she didn't know anything about the tributes this year? Could she be lying? Or maybe she's telling the truth about every tribute except for 13's tributes.

Agrippa sighs heavily. "13 just isn't safe. They've always been strange, and I have a bad feeling about them this year. The male tribute's eyes are just...wrong. He looks like he's up to something. I really would stay away from them if I were either of you." She gives them a warning glance and continues her meal in near-silence except to answer the rest of Emery's questions. Emery's moved on. Matt is still stuck thinking about the district no one dares talk about and wondering what the male from 13 holds that frightens even people from the Capitol.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: wow okay sorry about that**

**long story short my dad got rid of the wifi in my house and**

**basically now i'm finding wifi wherever I can and it aint easy**

**but I have like six more of these chapters written so dont be all angry and shit okay we're good now espe-shell-ly since school is starting wednesday**

**so uh**

**here ya go**

"_Stop thinking about me."_

Matt opens his eyes and the male from 13 is directly above him, his hands on either side of Matt's shoulders, his legs on either side of Matt's legs. He's a foot from Matt's face and he's staring into it with those storm-grey eyes.

Matt screams.

"_Shut up! Do you want them to hear you screaming like an idiot and come in?"_

"_I...I...what?" _Matt takes a second, collects himself. He's in the hotel bed, the comfy blankets pulled up around him, the window set to the wallpaper of a forest that calms him more than the view of the Capitol outside his window does. Maybe in a few days he'll be able to deal with the spread-out city below him without giving into a panic attack, but for now he needs some sort of reminder of home. His television is set to a random channel with the sound barely audible, the only way he could fall asleep knowing that in two weeks he will probably be dead. The lights are off except for a light in the corner which is very dim, just enough to make out the way 13's eyes shine when reflecting them.

He's in the hotel. Okay. He's in the hotel. He knows that much. But why is 13 here, and how did they let him leave his room without supervision? The tributes aren't allowed to visit tributes from other districts, Matt knows that. And here 13 is like he belongs here. Matt blinks the sleep from his eyes and takes a few deep breaths. _"I don't understand," _he tells him. _"How did you..."_

"_It's a dream, stupid."_

Matt looks around. Looks down at his body. Moves his fingers, his arm, his head. It doesn't feel like a dream. But 13 is overtop of him and he's speaking without opening his mouth. Telepathy? That doesn't make sense. No one can use telepathy. So it has to be a dream. But why is he dreaming so vividly about 13, and why does this image of 13 seem to have a mind of his own? Matt's definitely not making him say those words, and he doubts his dream mind would make 13 so...hostile.

"_I'm using a lot of energy to do this," _says 13, _"so don't be surprised if I just, you know, disappear. All of a sudden and shit. This is, like, top secret. I'm not supposed to be doing it. So you have to, you know, shut up and listen, okay?" _He looks around the room like he's not sure if they're being watched. _"God, your room is terrible. The thirteenth floor has a much better setup. Probably because we're gonna die first."_

"_Don't say that. You could live."_

13 rolls his eyes. _"Shut the hell up, you don't know a damn thing. Anyway. I need you to stop thinking about me. It's weird and, like, I can sense it and it's bothering me...so stop doing it before I make an enemy out of you."_

"_We're all enemies," _says Matt, _"and how can you sense it? Isn't this just a dream? You're part of my imagination–"_

"_Oh my god, Matt, shut up! I'm real, got it?! But you can't tell anyone, because then we'd both be in deep shit, and trust me, you do __**not**__ want the Capitol mad at you." _The way his voice breaks in the middle of the sentence scares Matt, because 13 sounds so broken. Like he knows the Capitol can do more than just kill him, or maybe he's just so not ready to die. But then again, who is? _"Anyway. Stop it. Get me out of your head and think about the Games or something. Your strategy. I swear I'm going to fucking kill you if you keep thinking about me. I'm nothing special. Got it?"_

"_I kind of beg to differ, considering how you appeared in my dreams and all." _He rolls over so that he's looking at 13's left arm in his field of vision, planted on the bed. It's only a second before he closes his eyes and tries to go back to sleep. _"It's all that goddamn food I had at dinner, I knew they had some really weird shit..."_

"_Matt, this isn't a game! I'm really here! And I'm serious!"_

Matt keeps his eyes closed and he hears 13 sigh, which he doesn't really understand because 13 isn't even using his mouth. Neither is he, Matt realizes, and he didn't even notice he was speaking telepathically until now. Does that mean they're both special in the dream, or that it's the normal mode of communication? Matt's never had a lucid dream before, and he can't say he enjoys the experience.

"_Fine. I guess I have no choice. Matthias Garretty, right? Well...my name is Andrew Detmer."_

13 gets off the bed. Matt can feel the weight disappear and he listens as the door closes behind 13 as he leaves. He only opens his eyes after a minute has passed and 13 hasn't come back. He's still in the dream, or he's pretty sure. His hands and feet feel heavy, like they're anchors, and he's starting to see spots. What the hell was that, anyway? Just a lucid dream, he figures, something his mind invented it because he's thinking so much about 13. And the hallucination of 13 is right. He's thinking too much about him. He needs to stop. He sighs and rolls over in bed and tries to go to dream-sleep, however that's possible.

The morning after is slightly unpleasant. Matt's used to getting up somewhat early, but the lack of sleep he got last night from being immersed in the lucid dream has taken a toll on him and it takes him a few minutes to even get out of bed. When he finally does, he goes into the bathroom, chews a toothpaste pill, makes sure he's decent, and heads downstairs.

Emery is sitting on the couch with the television turned on in front of her. She's watching some of the previous Hunger Games, trying to devise a strategy. As he watches, though, he realizes it's not previous Hunger Games. He just assumed it was because the screen was showing the Reapings. He stands there behind the couch and suddenly it's very clear what it is because he sees himself on the screen just as his name is called, going from excited to horrified all in a second's time. And he sees himself go up towards the stage and he sees himself standing there on the stage looking so white he might be on the verge of fainting. He hadn't known he had looked that scared. He just remembers the blood pounding in his ears and Agrippa's voice and then finally Emery. And he watches Emery's name called, and relives that moment when he knew that she felt like she was about to be executed. Which, in a way, she was. Is. Whatever.

He watches the other districts' Reapings. He's seen all the tributes, so he's only watching to match them up to their districts, even though they were sort of in order in the lobby. 11 and 12 were districts he could figure out easily. And then the moment he's been waiting for. District 13 is shown on the screen.

It's way more glamorous than Matt had thought when he was a child. He's seen it on Reapings on television before, but different camera angles are used every time, and this year the camera is almost perpendicular to the Justice Building, looking straight out at the audience. Matt scans the surroundings. It looks so incredibly different from District 5 – whereas District 5 is mostly packed dirt and enormous potholes everywhere from the wiring in the ground, District 13 is a shiny utopia. Not nearly as beautiful as the Capitol, but definitely more impressive than the city in District 5. Their buildings reach almost to the sky, and the place where the Justice Building is located isn't dirt ground like eleven of the other districts - it's shiny tile like District 2's Justice Building area. As far as Matt knows, though, District 13 is hated by the Capitol because they were the figurehead of the rebellion. That's why so many of the people in the district were killed off. They were lucky to still have enough people to be used in the Games. So why is their district so pristine and lovely while Matt's own district, neighbors with the Careers, is barely even able to get away with having a city?

He watches their escort – Matt can't tell whether the escort is male or female for the shoulder-length multicolored hair – come up onto the stage and introduce the mandatory video, which shows the history of the Hunger Games. Matt's district had to watch it as well. It's required for every district, to play up the fact that being in the Games is apparently an honor. Matt doesn't buy it for a second. When it's over, the Reaping officially begins and 13's escort reaches into the Reaping ball. The male tribute's name is called, and Matt suddenly has trouble breathing.

Because the male tribute's name, called out loud and clear, is Andrew Detmer.

He's glad Emery is facing the TV and not him, because he's sure he's gone as white as a ghost. He takes a few seconds to breathe, to calm himself down, and he watches 13 as he goes up to the stage, watches 13's face, set in stone, no expression. He watches 13 as he takes his place in front of the Justice Building, turns around, and looks out at the crowd of the rest of District 13. And he watches as the female tribute's name is called and she also looks like she can't be bothered to give a fuck about any of this.

Why is District 13 acting like the Careers do?

Sure, they're not volunteering themselves for people being reaped, but they look like they were prepared to be reaped. Were they already told that they would be the ones reaped? Isn't that against the rules? Matt wants to believe it's all in his head, but he can't shake the visual of 13's faces and how unsurprised they looked. He wants to go up to the thirteenth floor and ask them, but it's also against the rules and he doesn't want to get on the bad side of the Gamemakers before he even starts the Games.

His face is back to normal color by the time Emery gets off the couch and passes him on her way to her room.

"Emery's got a good start on her strategy," says Remainder, coming to sit where Emery had previously been sitting. The video is still playing, looping back and going through the districts again, and after it finishes, Caesar Flickerman will probably be on with Claudius Templesmith and they'll be talking about what districts they think are going to have the most chance, and making the two weeks leading up to the Games even more unbearable. Because Matt will have to sit here and watch them as they tell the Capitol that District 5 has nothing special about them this year and that they will never live up to the legacy of the female that teamed up with District 4, and Matt will just realize that he never did have a chance.

Remainder looks over the top of the couch at Matt. "She came down here pretty early this morning and started watching this stuff. Right now, if I had to bet, I'd be putting all my money on her, no question. And what do _you _have to show for yourself, Matthias, hm? A narcissism complex and a habit of talking in your sleep and making absolutely no sense." She turns around and continues watching the footage. "Pathetic."

He doesn't know how to answer that. She's very right, but at the same time she's incredibly wrong. He wants to yell and scream at her and tell her she doesn't know what she's talking about, but she's his only chance to devise a strategy for the Games that will actually work, and of course she sort of _does_ know what she's talking about. She had no obligation to stay with District 5 after she won, and she's not really doing anything wrong. If anything, she's doing them a favor because she's actually willing to help them. Matt slowly realises that he's going to have to suck up and make amends with her. Maybe not right now, but within the day. He's only got fourteen left before he's forced into the arena with twenty-five bloodthirsty tributes that aren't interested in making friends.

The tribute parade is the first order of business. It takes place that night, so Matt is whisked off by a team of Capitol boys with so many surgical alterations between them that they barely even look human – more like they were viciously attacked by a rainbow, Matt thinks. At first he protests against their insistence to wax his arms and legs, but they tell him that he's going to look so wonderful, and this appearance will help him get sponsors, and then he'll get more gifts in the Games, and that's all they need to say before Matt lays down again and lets them do whatever they want to him. He knows Emery is doing the same thing with her stylists, although she probably didn't argue with them at all. She knows what she needs to do, and she's going to let them do it. She's been the smart one all along, Matt realizes. She's had the plan devised since the beginning – go into the Capitol, make sure everything is business, and do whatever possible to get everyone possible on your good side. Matt's interested to see how she's going up to play up her interview persona. He assumes that Remainder and Agrippa will help coach him on his own. He has no clue what to make himself sound like.

"You're going to be the talk of District 5," says one of the stylists – Brillis, Matt is pretty sure.

"Will I look like the girl from the 80th Hunger Games?" Matt asks him.

Brillis looks at the other two stylists, shares a silent look between them. Then he turns to Matt. "You remember her? I mean...it's not like she was very forgettable. But...well, I didn't think anyone really paid attention to her wardrobe. She was much more memorable for her work with District 4."

"Well, I remember. I remember it was the first time District 5 really looked good."

Another one of the stylists beams with pride. "I was one of the stylists that year. I did the gold lining. I custom-ordered it and everything, and when I opened the package, I literally could not breathe. It was _gorgeous. _Like liquid gold. In fact, I think that was one of the materials used in it."

Matt is liking his stylists. They seem a bit spoiled, but that's something he's come to expect from the Capitol. People who have never tasted the other side of society usually don't have to worry about hunger or thirst or being reaped. They live nothing but a life of luxury. Matt has to remember that.

"You're going to look as great as we can make you," says Brillis. "We'll make you look as great as her...in your own way. We have a fantastic idea this year. You'll love it."

So Matt takes a deep breath and braces himself for his makeover.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: wow ok sorry again for the delay, school and all that shit. I have wifi at my job and at school though so updates should be much more regular. Thanks for not beating me to a bloody pulp.**

**(I also have an account on AO3 under the username arachnidsgrip8. I'm much more active on that because I can write right onto the editor there.)**

"I...I can't believe it."

Matt stands there in front of the mirror. Emery's across the way, twirling in front of the mirrors on the side of the room, watching as her dress fans out and twirls around her, shimmering like the sun. Not the sun, really, Matt thinks. More like fluorescent lights, like the inside of an electric bulb, the yellow-orange light that glows around the wire. Her dress is skintight until mid-thigh, where it flares out and fades from black into a bright, strong yellow, the yellow of electricity. The dress is sleeveless, and she's got these conductors stuck down her arms with temoprary tattoos that look like lightning connecting them. Her hair is down and has been styled to perfection, midnight black and full of sleek waves. She's got bright yellow eyeshadow on overtop of black-lined eyes and she can't help smiling – she looks absolutely beautiful.

And then there's Matt. And he can't believe what he looks like because he's got this nearly skintight suit on and its lined with the same yellow as Emery's all along the arms and the torso and the legs. It's a short-sleeved suit, so he's got fake electrodes placed on his arms and around his neck. They glow softly with a dim amber light, but it's still noticeable enough to be seen from a distance. He's got yellow dye in his hair, little patches among the natural black of it, and although they're somewhat scratchy and irritating, he's got yellow contact lenses as well. They turn yellow-white in the light and supposedly they light up electric blue in the dark, although Matt hasn't tested them yet.

"We look fantastic," he tells Emery, turning around to face his fellow tribute.

She gives him a once-over and snorts. "I'm only doing this for the sponsors. I don't really care about the outfits."

"I thought girls were supposed to love that stuff."

"Yeah. You thought. There's a novel concept."

She leaves the room and Matt wonders if they're ever going to be able to have a civil conversation with each other that doesn't end with one of them storming off. Probably not, Emery is too determined to stick to her own agenda and Matt is too passive. He lets her walk all over him, but she takes the right sort of advantage of it.

It'll make her all the more easy to kill when it comes to it.

Matt is beginning to realize that it will be easier than he thought to actually kill someone. If it's this easy to hate the other tribute from his district, then how much easier will it be to kill someone from a different district, someone he can disassociate himself from? The feel of a weapon in his hand is still unfamiliar, though, and he wonders how things will play out when he's one-on-one with an enemy tribute and it's all up to him whether he or she lives or dies.

He's still not quite ready for this, no matter how much he tells himself that he is.

The tribute parade is that night. The District 5 stylists gush over the outfits that they have helped craft and tell Matt and Emery how lovely they look. That this will be a memorable year, and that sponsors will be lining the streets of the Capitol to give money. But Matt knows they are more or less paid to stay optimistic about this whole thing. No one wants stylists that mope around because they think their tributes are going to lose so what's the point in even trying. They really do try to make these two weeks as enjoyable as they can. The only problem is that there's really no way for them to make it legitimately enjoyable. They're prettying up their charges for execution.

"I'm freaking out," Matt thinks out loud as they stand in their chariot, the District 5 genetically-manipulated yellow-tone horses restless in front of them, the two-hundred-foot-high doors in front of them, leading to the stadium, looking ever more ominous.

Emery rolls her eyes, which have been done up with yellow-tinted mascara and lined in more kohl than Matt even knew was possible to put on them. "Don't let it get to you. It's not that serious, okay? We just go out, meet President Snow, and then come back. Then we get dinner and go to our rooms and we're another day closer to certain death."

Matt's knuckles are white on the chariot bar he's holding. He wishes he could look around at the other districts, but the only one that he's able to see is District 4 in front of them. He doesn't want to look behind him at District 6 in case they're looking for an enemy to make right off the bat and Matt's face is the last thing in their minds before they go to sleep tonight. He would prefer to remain anonymous to them, let them go after the districts they have personal problems with, and make it so that they don't even know what district he's from. At least not off the top of their heads.

District 4 is formidable enough, being a Career district. Matt really hopes that the arena isn't aquatic or he's in deep shit. There's not much in the way of water in District 5, and District 4 can slice through the water like they were born swimming. Which they practically were. He marks the male's form in his mind – sun-bleached blond hair, shirtless with smooth muscles rippling all over his body, He's got a fishing net sort of haphazardly tied around his chest downwards with dark blue shimmery pants. He's got fish hooks randomly placed about in his hair and he's got one dangling from an earring. District 4 always has some sort of fish nets incorporated into their outfits, so Matt's not really impressed. But the male tribute looks like he could tear Matt limb from limb so he's not going to get in 4's way if he can help it. The female is a little less threatening-looking, she's more slender and although Matt is sure that she's formidable in a fight and that he doesn't really want to rush straight into combat, she looks like she's sort of fragile and like if he applies enough force he'll be able to overcome her. But that's also assuming that he's feeling at one hundred percent and that he has some kind of weapon with him.

"Too bad you can't see your District 13 girlfriend," says Emery, vicious. "Of course she's probably going to kill you the first chance she gets so it's just as well that you can't see her."

The chariots in front of them lurch forward and Matt's stomach lurches with them. The doors open a ways in front of District 1's chariot and Matt catches sight of the stadium. Mostly the lights up on the ceiling and the crowds on either side. They're going wild, cheering for District 1 who has just passed through the doors and into the stadium. Matt isn't sure what to expect, whether he should play it up for the cameras like he did when he got off the train or whether he should act very serious like he feels that the outlying districts are going to do, since they know they're not adored like the Capitol's little pets 1, 2, 3, and 4 are. Barely even 3, really, District 3 isn't part of the Career districts so it's really only 1, 2, and 4 and everyone else is pretty much ignored. That's part of why Matt is so nervous. He knows he's going to have to do something really crazy and reckless in order to get anyone to realize that District 5 is worth sponsoring.

As they pass into the stadium, Emery takes the serious route. She stares straight ahead, her mouth pressed in a tight line, her dress sparking and electrifying and random currents of electricity leaping from electrode to electrode. It's doing the same on Matt's and he's in heaven. He looks so amazing. The crowd knows he looks amazing. His face is on the screens on either side of President Snow's podium on the balcony where he is to give the speech. He can't stop himself from smiling, and the crowd smiles and cheers right back. And he is waving.

He can feel Emery's anger sizzling the air beside him. She thinks he's a traitor. He was supposed to match her. They were supposed to be a team, even if they're going to be splitting up in the Games. And she can't stand that he's differentiating from that. He's in for a pretty big shitstorm when they get to the hotel. But right now, he couldn't care less.

The chariots pull up in a semicircle. Because of the way they're positioned, Matt can see Andrew Detmer from District 13 in his jet-black chariot with the silver lining and the biohazard sign imprinted on the side. Andrew's standing there and he's dressed in entirely black, a sort of jumpsuit with red lining all over it, swirling in random patterns up his legs and arms and then meeting at the middle in another biohazard sign. On the back of his ankles he's got a large red claw on each, curving upwards, like a Denonichyus claw, and the sleeves of his suit are skintight all the way to the hands, where they seem to attach to the back of them in yet another biohazard sign, still in deep toxic red. His eyes have been lined with midnight black to appear almost sunken-in, and when he glances over at Matt, the effect is instantaneous. The breath is stolen from Matt's chest, not so much because of the initial attraction to 13 but more because of the purely animal way he looks. Like he could be eating raw meat and it would not look out of place. Andrew Detmer looks positively _feral_, and it's strangely invigorating.

President Snow's speech more or less recaps what every district has been required to watch beginning with the year that they turn twelve – the history of Panem and the horrible Dark Days. He once again enforces the theme of extreme honor and how proud the tributes should feel if they win for their district, like it's going to change the way they feel about being made to fight to the death on live television. No amount of history or promise of pride can make a person want to participate in the Games. Even the Careers, with all their practicing for the Games and volunteering for other tributes and going into the arena with a smile, even they would choose a different path if it was set before them. If they could stay out of the Games and be guaranteed that their parents wouldn't disown them for breaking the Career promise, they would do it. Matt has no doubt.

After they get back through the doors again, the chariots line up in two rows, one of seven and one of six. The tributes dismount the chariots and they are allowed to socialize a little bit before they go back to the hotel and their dinner. Matt knows who he's going to speak to and it's not the female of District 13. He doesn't care if Emery sees. Let her see. They're not playing for the same team anyway. District 5's tributes might as well be sworn enemies. He knows Emery will go for his blood if she runs into him in the arena and he wants to make sure that he has someone on his side that's not her.

"Andrew," he calls as soon as he is close enough to 13 for him to hear.

13 has just dismounted the chariot, is making faces at the outfit he wore for the tribute parade, but when he hears his name, he looks up and sees Matt jogging towards him.

"What?" he asks as Matt comes to a stop in front of him.

"It was you, wasn't it? That visited me in my dream?"

"_Shh_," 13 warns, looking around at the rest of the tributes. Thankfully, they're all preoccupied with each other. None of them are facing 13's tributes. Still, 13 keeps his voice low. "You sound freaking crazy, you know that? I didn't visit you in your goddamn dream."

"But-"

"_Shhhhhhh._ Leave it alone. Leave _me_ alone. I don't want anything to do with you, you got that?"

Matt is so confused. He was sure. He was absolutely certain that it was 13 and that the dream was real and that somehow or another, Andrew Detmer had some sort of psychic powers that allowed him to be in the dream. But 13 is glaring at him with the slight confusion of someone who is really fucking pissed off that Matt even has the audacity to accuse him of doing something so ludicrous like appearing in his dream consciously.

"I thought..." Matt sighs and shakes his head. "...never mind. Hey, listen. Do you want to team up in the arena? You know, form an alliance. You and me, together. I like the look of your district." He knows that's always a compliment, to make someone's district sound like something really special. "I just, you know, I think it would be good for us. We could cover each others' weaknesses."

"I don't have any weaknesses," says 13, and turns his back on Matt, instead starting to move over to where the female of 13 is standing alone, deep in thought, or else just staring off into space.

Matt realizes for the first time that Remainder and Agrippa and Emery and everyone else who's been here with him might be right. 13 may be a district that he really doesn't want to team up with. While 13 would be a great ally, according to what he's said and the air of mystery that surrounds them, forming a team with him might prove to be a bad decision. Not only because 13 is so strange and secluded, but because when the time comes for them to kill each other, Matt is one hundred percent certain that he would lose.


	6. Chapter 6

Matt walks into the room to hear Remainder and Emery speaking to each other.

They're at the table. They haven't noticed he's there yet. He backs up a little bit so that he's hidden from view behind the wall and listens to what they're saying, although he has a suspicion he already knows what they're talking about.

"I don't want to team up with him at all." That's Emery. Cold, calculating, and already forming her moves in her mind from seeing the other tributes. She's got it all down, he's sure. Knows how she'll kill every single one of them, how long it will take to do it, analyzing their weaknesses and their strengths and understanding how she'll exploit each one. Matt guarantees she already has him marked off as an easy close-combat kill. He's bad with close combat – not like he's good with anything, really – and so that will probably be the easiest way to attack him.

Remainder sighs in a way that says she knows Emery is right but she doesn't think it's the smart choice. "Listen. The two of you are from the same district. Every year, people leave the other tribute from their district alone and try to go after the rest of them. They usually die separately, neither of them having any involvement in the death of the other. That's not what I think you should do. I think you and Matt should tag team. You could help him out a little, show him some stuff to use in the arena."

"Why? He's fucking stupid. He doesn't know a thing. He thinks he's this hotshot that's going to breeze right into the arena and...I don't know, do something. He's going to make it up as he goes. What if he endangers me? I can't risk that. I can't risk him giving away our position to the Careers. And 12. I'm not one for long-range and they're pretty sneaky with the bombs they can make and stuff."

She skips a beat, then says, "And besides, I saw him talking to 13."

"What?" Remainder asks, actually sounding concerned. It's about the first real emotion that Matt has witnessed her display.

"The male from 13. At first I thought he had a thing for the female and was going to try and protect her or something, but after the parade he marched right up to 13 and started talking to him. 13 looked pretty pissed but it was kind of obvious what Matthias was trying to get at."

Remainder curses under her breath. "God. Alright. Do whatever you want. If he's going to town with 13, he's as good as a lost cause. I don't even want to be associated with him. That's the Capitol's problem, not mine." She gets up from the table and moves into the kitchen. Matt hears her open the refrigerator. "I don't understand this fucking district. Never did, never will. Never wanted to live there in the first fucking place. Jesus."

Matt doesn't really have time to get angry at her for so openly expressing her distaste of where she was born and raised. He's too busy wondering exactly what is so dangerous about 13, like he's been worrying about for the past few days. Everyone is so secretive about the district, but it's not like anything about District 13 is really a secret. Its export isn't a secret. Its population isn't a secret. Its location isn't a secret. So what makes it something to be so fussed about like this? Matt has half a mind to walk right up to President Snow and ask him why everyone is so dodgy about District 13.

He doesn't, though, of course. He stays behind the wall and listens to Remainder mumble a few things about 13, but nothing important, mostly how stupid her male tribute is being to want to team up with someone like that. When Remainder goes to her room, Matt waits a few seconds before walking into the room like he's just come in. Emery is at the table, looking over some old battle strategies used in the Games on a tablet that she's been provided, and when she sees Matt, she rolls her eyes, as is pretty much customary by this point.

"Hope you and 13 get along splashingly," she snaps.

"We will, thank you," says Matt as he heads up to his room. Because they will. Maybe not right away, but he knows one thing for sure – the Capitol is afraid of Andrew, and if they're afraid of Andrew, then Matt definitely wants him on his team.

* * *

Training begins the day after that.

Matt really doesn't have any fighting skills that he can name off the top of his head. He can throw things, but not with any kind of extreme accuracy. He can run. That will come in handy, at least. But for how long? He can't just evade everyone the entire time. That's not going to get him even halfway through the Games. As he passes through the doors into the training arena, wearing his grey and black training uniform, he takes a look around at the different stations and realizes that even his prior assumption was an understatement – he is definitely not going to last any amount of time in the Hunger Games.

He wonders why he's even here. Why he hasn't just impaled himself with a knife or something, or slit his throat with the razor in the bathroom. But he's sure there's some sort of safety on the razor and he wouldn't be able to anyway, and maybe the same safety barrier on the knife. They wouldn't trust the tributes with sharp objects before the Games.

Why did he ever think that he would even stand a chance in the Games?

And suddenly he knows.

He knows that his only chance is 13. His only chance to make it anywhere in the Games lies in 13's hands. The Capitol is afraid of him. Emery and Remainder don't like him and they don't want Matt teaming up with him. He's got to be strong. He's got to be. So strong that the Capitol is trying to pretend like he doesn't exist. They're being mysterious about him so that no one even thinks to team up with him. But Matt's already hooked. He leaves Emery's side (which she isn't too disappointed about) and heads right for 13, who is standing near the corner, watching the stations and the leaders of each station set them up. The tributes are all gathered in a sort of crowd and one of the station leaders is pacing back and forth in front of them, waiting for their attention. Matt figures he has a few minutes until everyone's focused enough to listen to her. He comes up alongside 13's side.

"Listen," he says right away, because 13 is looking at him with poison in his eyes and he's none too happy about the District 5 loser coming up to try and form an alliance again. "I know you don't like me, for whatever reason. I know you don't think we would make a good alliance. But I'm gonna tell you right now, I'm dead unless I team up with you. I really need you, okay? I really do, dude. So, listen, you can kill me or something at the end because I know you're probably powerful enough to, and that would be totally cool." Of course he's not going to go down without a fight, but he figures it would be easier to get rid of one tribute instead of twenty-four others. "But please, please, can we form a team. Please. I'll do anything."

13 looks him over, sizing him up. Not like 13 is impressive-looking himself, he's just a scrawny underfed kid. Matt's never seen eyes like 13's, though, and they send sparks through his fingertips. And he's got something hidden. Something the Capitol doesn't want him around because of.

"You were in my dream, consciously," Matt continues, and before 13 can argue he says, "I know you were. I'm positive. And I think you know it, too, but you're not supposed to be in my dreams so you're gonna deny it every single time I mention it. And that's cool. I don't care. As long as you know that I know. You have something special about you. And, like, that's whatever and shit. But please. Team up with me. Please. I'm pretty much begging you here. I can't do anything, I'm not special, I've never trained with weapons or any of that shit. I need help."

He waits, watches as 13 considers it, or just pretends to consider it and is actually just thinking about how stupid Matt is for doing this. Matt doesn't blame him. He feels pretty damn stupid doing it, too.

"I know you don't have any weaknesses," Matt says quietly, "but I have a lot of them. And I need you."

13 glances around, then leans in just a little closer.

"You're fucking stupid, Matthias Garetty," he tells him.

"I know," says Matt, serious.

13 heaves a huge sigh and rolls his eyes. He reminds Matt a lot of Emery except that Matt can stand to be around 13. "Look. I'll, like, I'll let you tag along. I guess. But listen to me – you're gonna die. There is no way for you to avoid that. If you team up with me, it's absolutely guaranteed that you're going to die. If you want to have any chance of making it through the Games, you'll run as fast and as far away from me as possible."

Matt shakes his head. 13's got to be delusional. If the two of them team up, they're going to have much more of a chance to win. Maybe 13's just thinking about the inevitable death that will have to happen to one of them. Probably he's thinking about how they'll crush the other tributes, and then at the end one of them will have to kill the other and it will be horrible and unfair but it will have to happen. And most likely it is Andrew who's going to come out on top and that's why he's warning little District 5 Matthias Garetty.

So he says, "It doesn't matter. I still want to be your partner."

And 13 heaves a sigh and says, "Alright, then."

And just like that, they're a team.

The girl pacing back and forth in front of the tributes finally stands to attention, hands clasped behind her back. She doesn't look like much, but when she speaks Matt is surprised to hear her voice projecting across the whole room.

"Hello, tributes. In a week's time, you will be sent off to the arena to fight each other to the death. Our job here in the training arena is to help you prepare for the Games, no matter what your prior experience or lack thereof. We have stations open all across the room as you can see, and each one will teach you a different skill that you will need to know in the arena. Make your choices wisely. These will also help you to decide what you're going to do for the Gamemakers during demonstration. You are prohibited from killing each other before the Games – such an event will result in immediate disqualification and execution. So don't think you're getting out of your predestined fate." The way she says it, Matt thinks she really believes that it was always their fate to be picked. He guesses he has to believe it, too, since it happened and there's nothing he could have done to change it. "Do I make myself clear?"

The tributes answer back in varied response times. Except 13. He remains silent, just watches the girl and then slowly moves his gaze across the other tributes, sizing them up again probably. Matt figures 13's devising a strategy to beat each and every one of them. He'll use what he knows about Emery to help 13 out, although he doubts 13 will need much help with any of the tributes. He looks pretty confident in himself.

They break for training and Matt's not sure what to do first. There are weapon stations, like targets for bow and arrow and knife practice, and there are camoflauge stations for hiding yourself from the other tributes. There's a station for practice with throwing heavy objects and there's a station for rope-climbing, like if you need to set a trap and hide above it, Matt guesses, and there are close-combat stations and he just has no fucking idea what he is good at or what he should even start with. He knows he needs to go to every station, but where does he begin? He guesses he should probably try and learn the knife-throwing thing, he's alright at long-distance and needs to hone his skills. If he can get long-distance down, then he's at least got something to defend himself against other tributes. He decides he should probably have one offensive and one defensive skill, if anything. So he'll learn this, and then he'll maybe head over to the camoflauge station and see if he can find out how to hide himself so he can slip into the scenery when the other tributes come after him.

He watches 13 with curiosity. All 13 does is stand there and stare at the stations, then goes off to the camoflauge station and lock his eyes on the tree they have there. He doesn't make a move to try and paint himself the colors of the tree like two other tributes are doing (and miserably failing at, if Matt's going to be honest). 13 just gazes intently at the tree like they're having a conversation.

Matt is beginning to rethink his choice of alliance a little.

But he trusts 13, even if the kid is a little wrong in the head. There's got to be a reason that everyone is so terrified of him. He didn't answer the dream thing but Matt is sure that he's right, that 13 has some sort of weird dream powers and maybe that's what has the Capitol up in arms about him. That would make sense, although Matt's still confused about how dream powers work and how they would get 13 anywhere in the Games. People barely sleep in them anyway. Oh well, he supposes he shouldn't really be doubting his new ally, he was lucky enough to get 13 as a teammate and he doesn't want to screw that up.

He turns back to his station and continues his training.

* * *

"So what are you gonna do for the Gamemakers?" Matt asks 13 after training. Their test is the day after tomorrow, the day when they will perform for the Gamemakers and receive their scores. Depending on the scores, they'll get more or less sponsors, and sponsors can save a tribute when he or she might be in trouble that only special medicine or weapons can fix.

13 lifts one shoulder up and then down. Matt is struck by the way the move is so elegant, yet not in a way that would alert anyone else. It's just something he notices because he's right there and they're standing together. 13 still won't look at him – he barely does, even when he's talking to Matt. "Don't know yet. I'm still working on stuff."

"Like what, staring at trees?"

13 lets one corner of his mouth lift up in a smirk. "Yeah, something like that."

At least they're talking. That's more than Matt could ever get out of his fellow tribute. Well, anything that wasn't incredibly sarcastic, anyway. He knows 13's not actually going to sit there and stare at a tree for the Gamemakers and 13 makes it obvious. With Emery, it's always a guessing game, and her sarcasm is meant to hurt Matt rather than just joke around with him. He gets the feeling that 13 is at least a little happy that he won't have to face the rest of the tributes alone. He also gets the feeling that the female tribute from District 13 isn't on great terms with 13 right now. They are a team, but only in illusion. Matt thinks that as soon as the gong rings she will turn on him, abandon him like the rest of the tributes. She wants to distance herself from him which only intrigues Matt even more into the backstory of 13.

Matt and 13 walk together to the elevators in the lobby of their hotel. When it's time for them to get in separate elevators, Matt turns to 13 and nods once, a silent pact between the two of them, like, _I'm not going to betray you._ But it's tough when there's only one victor.


	7. Chapter 7

Matt scores a 13.

He can hardly believe it. 13 is the highest score that a person can get. Normally that would be great – it means he's going to get a lot of sponsors – but he knows for sure that what he did in the training center isn't even close to deserving a 13. In fact, it's quite the opposite...he'd have expected below a 6. He screwed up and made a fool of himself, but there's the number on the TV, rotating next to Matt's headshot, and Agrippa and the stylists are congratulating him and he's just standing there in stupid shock. He watches the tributes' faces as they come up one by one and then he holds his breath as 13 comes up. He can't decide whether he wants 13 to get a high number – meaning more sponsors but more attention (and consequently, a greater risk of death) from the other tributes – or a low number, meaning less sponsors but maybe allowing 13 to slip by the other tributes more or less undetected, as no tribute worries about a tribute with a low score.

13 gets a 1.

No one in the history of the Games has ever gotten a 1. Emery glances over at Matt, her jaw dropped and then turning into a sadistically satisfied smile. Now that Matt has teamed up with someone who's gotten a 1, she can take the stage by storm and blaze a path to glory with her score of 8 that she was previously so angry with Matt for beating, even though he tried to tell her that he didn't have a clue how it was even possible that he got a 13.

"You're gonna die," she says, like he hasn't been thinking about that for the past few days nonstop.

"Leave me alone," Matt says to her, and she just gives him a knowing look and that's the end of that. She doesn't need to keep torturing him because she knows the thought spinning around in his head is torture enough. Who can eat or sleep or even think when they know their only ally is an awkward-looking antisocial loner from an outlying district who scored a 1 in his demonstration?

For the next few days, only Matt's stylists help him. Agrippa tries to explain some things about the Games to him, but it's all stuff Matt already knows and finally she gives up and lets him be. Remainder won't speak to him. Emery is busy socializing with Agrippa and Remainder and figuring out her own strategy. Matt is left to his own devices, and he knows why. The stylist team is just prettying him up for slaughter. They know he won't make it any amount of time. He's already been written off. No one is going to bet on him or try and get him sponsors. He's done. He's finished.

But he doesn't believe that.

Or at least, he _thinks_ he doesn't believe that.

He sees 13 – _Andrew_, he reminds himself – in his dreams all the time now. It doesn't matter where Matt is dreaming, whether it's in the Capitol, walking through the streets, or maybe he's dreaming himself back home, back to District 5. That was a nice night, he remembers. He'd been walking down a back trail that led to his house and suddenly Andrew had shimmered into existence beside him. Matt had already been seeing him in just about every dream for the past few days, so he wasn't surprised. Andrew matched his step next to him, his hands in his pockets, looking mostly down at the ground but occasionally up at Matt's face when he wanted to study his expression.

"_Interviews are coming up in a few days," _Andrew said. He waited a few seconds for Matt to take the hint. When he didn't, he continued, _"Whatcha gonna do for yours?"_

"_I don't know...stylist team probably has something planned. I don't know. I'll figure it out when it's closer to the date."_

Andrew made a sound of sympathy. _"They've abandoned you, haven't they?"_

And all at once, Matt broke down. Not like he hadn't been fully aware and understanding of what being abandoned meant, and the fact that his entire team had done so to him, but this was the first time he had shown any real emotion towards it. He felt like he couldn't show weakness in front of everyone, especially Emery, but here with Andrew...well, it felt different. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve, trying not to draw attention to the fact that he was starting to cry a little bit, but Andrew saw anyway. He let one corner of his mouth lift up in a smile but he wasn't happy about anything that was happening. How could he have been?

"_It's alright. It happens. You just have to figure out a way to survive without them. You're better than them, 5. You're stronger than them." _His smile grew just a little bit wider. _"That's what my mom used to say to me when I was younger. It's my motto, basically."_

"_My name's not 5, asshole."_

"_Well," _Andrew full-on grinned this time. _"My name's not 13."_

When Matt woke up that morning he stopped thinking of Andrew as 13. And when he passed the young tribute in the hall later on on his way to style, the two of them caught eyes and Matt mouthed "Andrew" and Andrew smiled like the sun and Matt's heart soared. And maybe they just might have a chance after all, he thinks, because he's never seen any tribute smile at another like he and Andrew have.

It's finally the day before the Games, and the interviews are being held tonight.

Matt's heart is beating like crazy. He's ready to spontaneously combust any second. It's not because of him and his own interview as it is seeing the other districts and especially, as he's beginning to think by default, District 13, who will look so beautifully dangerous and whose interviews will be the most interesting of all, because they're here for something. There is a reason that they are here, and it's not just fate, and Matt is going to figure it out, and he is going to watch them while they're on the stage and see the way they sit there with coiled-up energy just waiting to be released and he is going to fall in love.

Matt is in love with District 13.

Not individually, of course, as he's only known them for two weeks and even though he feels a strong connection to Andrew he doubts it's anything more than alliance, but he is so in love with the mystery and intrigue of District 13 that he wants to win and somehow keep Andrew alive and then he wants to go on the Victory Tour back through the districts and he wants to go right on through District 5 and to District 13 and he wants to get off the train and live there. He wants to see their culture and he wants to watch the way they live and he wants to be a witness to every little thing about the district with the polished floors and the strange dark tributes.

He sees Andrew again later, out in front of the hotel, in the courtyard. Agrippa has given him permissions to be with District 13's male tribute as they're forming an alliance although she's watching from the lobby, ready to call for help if anything looks like it's going even slightly wrong.

The two of them are sitting on the fountain, their backs to it, and Andrew's sitting Indian style and Matt's letting his long legs hang over the edge. Andrew's bundled up in an old hoodie and slightly baggy jeans and Matt's got his trademark plaid look going on, short-sleeved green plaid shirt and a pair of slightly less baggy jeans than Andrew's.

"Don't you get hot in that?" Matt asks, indicating the hoodie.

"Uhm..." Andrew looks down at his hoodie, like he's just realised it's there. "...no, not really. Should I? Like, is it super hot?"

"It's summer. Of course it's hot."

Andrew smiles. "Well. Guess I'm special or something."

"You're special, alright." It's supposed to come out with a playfully negative connotation, but Matt can't think of anything to follow up with and so instead it sounds like a really retarded attempt at a compliment. Sure enough, Andrew takes it and runs with it.

"You think I'm special?" He's got that bright smile in his voice, almost like he's not used to enjoying himself and this is completely new territory. Matt can't help but smile, except he tries not to show it because he feels like that will just give Andrew more humour fuel and they'll feed off of each other until they're in hysterics on the ground.

Andrew nudges Matt with his shoulder, though, and he says, "C'mon, you said it before. I'm, like, I'm special, right?"

"Yeah, Andrew, you're special."

Andrew leaves him alone then, looks up at the sky and breathes in deep. "This is going to be fun."

"'Fun' isn't exactly the word I would have used," says Matt, shifting position a little uncomfortably. "It seems more like it's going to be...uhm...the opposite of fun. I mean, it'll be like, it'll be fun for everyone else. You know, everyone who's not going to be forced to fight each other to the death on live television. Won't be so fun for the people who are actually doing it."

The tribute beside him shrugs. "I don't know. I guess, like, I'm kind of excited for it to finally happen. I mean, I mean not like I've been _waiting _for it or anything, like, I wouldn't want to be a tribute if I had the choice...I think..." He trails off, and Matt's left to wonder what Andrew means by that. Does he mean he'd have been a Career if he thought about it for a little bit? Is he looking forward to the Games and the killing and the slaughter and the sleepless nights and the slow deaths and torture? Finally, Andrew speaks up again. "It's not like, you know, I'd want to do it given a choice between doing it and being back home...I think..." he says again, and Matt can sense the conflict going on inside Andrew's head and he wishes he knew what it was about. But he also has the feeling Andrew doesn't want to, or can't, talk about it, and so he leaves it be and lets him sit there looking up at the sky like he wants to push off the ground and disappear into it.

Matt can't breathe as he's practically pushed out onto the stage.

The roar of the crowd is what he notices first. It fills his ears. For a few seconds it's all he can think of, all that takes place in his mind, and he panics for about fifteen seconds.

And then he's floating.

Not literally, of course. He walks onto the stage and his shoulders are back and his head is high and he smiles. He smiles at the crowd and waves at them as he makes his way to where Caesar Flickerman is standing, waiting to greet him, and he barely even notices the fact the audience is more than just the few rows he initially saw, and he forgets that this interview is televised live in every single district, and he forgets that his fate rests on whether he can say the right things and make the right joke and answer the questions the right way.

He is invincible.

Caesar notices. He's good at that sort of thing, after hosting the interviews for so many years he's become very, very good at reading people almost from the second they step out onto the stage. He can tell that Matt's confident, that he's ready to speak up and joke around and entertain the audience and use that power to win his sponsors.

_It's a good thing this boy is so likeable,_ Caesar thinks to himself. _He's going to need it._

Matt and Caesar shake hands, Caesar smiling warmly, matching his reddish-brown-dyed hair. The two of them sit down and Matt's still riding on the high, his grin almost too big for his face. He relaxes back in the chair and lets the adrenaline carry him through.

"So, Matt...you're from District 5," Caesar starts out, which is a painfully obvious way to begin. Matt nods, then says, "yes sir" as a second thought. Caesar continues, careful about his question choice just as he is with every tribute. "Can you tell me something that's special about your district? Something that stands out to you. Something that you would remember about it while you're in the arena. Something about District 5 that all of us-" He sweeps his hand across the audience and, consequently, since he's live on every TV in the thirteen districts and the Capitol, all of Panem. "-should know about your home."

Matt runs everything he knows about his district through his mind. It all seems so mundane and ordinary to him, but he knows that not every district has the resources and the environment and the culture that District 5 has. It's hard, though, because he's never really seen the other districts' cultures besides sometimes on TV, like District 13 at the Reaping. So what is different and what is the same as the other districts?

"Well," Matt says, "we make electricity."

Caesar bursts into laughter, as does the audience. Matt quirks one side of his mouth up into a smile and lets it stay there. It was sort of a joke, sort of a nervous improvisation. Whichever way the audience wants to take it is fine. Let him be a comedy genius. Anything to get these people happy and laughing.

"You're quite the humourous one, Matthias," says Caesar after the laughter has died down. "We all know about your export. And it must be quite exciting, to live in the home of Panem's electricity supply. Certainly something to keep in mind during the Games, as that will most likely be one of your strategies." Matt really does appreciate the way that Caesar tries to protect the tributes, work with their words, not let them look like stuttering idiots. "I was looking more along the lines of sentimentality, though. We all see District 5 on the television every Reaping Day and for the recaps afterwards. What we don't see is the everyday life of a District 5 citizen. Is there anything that you do in your day-to-day life that you think Panem should know about?"

Matt thinks for a few more seconds. Finally, he says, "I remember that every year, there was like, this sort of festival. I mean, it wasn't anything huge. It wasn't even something that the whole town came to. In fact, there were only like a hundred people there. Anyway, we'd, like, we'd gather at the outskirts of the town and it would only be the kids that were working on their internships to running the power plants and stuff. I wasn't really an official intern but I went anyway. I think everyone just thought it was taking me a little longer to admit to anyone that I wanted to go into the district trade." He didn't, really. He's never wanted to go the same route as most of the kids he knows. He doesn't know what he had wanted to do but he didn't want to go into electricity. "So, like, okay, they did this really cool thing. They'd set up, you know, these things that looked like cannons. And it would take them most of the afternoon, and then that night they would fire whatever was in them. And it turned out to be these things like, uhm, like the fireworks you had here in the Capitol the other night except they were, like, electrical? I don't know what they were made of. But they would shoot them over the city and make a sort of grid out of them and for the whole night they'd light up the city really nice and soft green and every few seconds they'd spark really big, kind of like their own version of fireworks. That's why people didn't have to come out of their houses or anything, because you could see it from the windows and stuff. It...it was really cool," he finishes lamely.

"Ah. So your memory is sort of...a way to remember the beautiful times. The power – if you'll excuse the pun – of your district. The contained danger of electricity."

"Uh...sure."

The audience laughs again. If it's this easy, Matt thinks, he's going to have a ton of sponsors in no time. They'll be lining up out the door to send him parachutes.

They talk a little more about District 5, about what he'll miss (to which he replies that he'll miss being able to run around the city whenever he wanted, even though it's not really true, but 'being safe at home' doesn't seem like a plausible answer, and Caesar tells him that if he wins, he'll be able to run around the Capitol and his city in District 5 whenever he wants) and what he won't miss (he answers with 'my dad's cooking' and everyone cracks up, Matt beaming so that his father at home will know that it's just a joke even though his dad really doesn't have any idea how to cook). Finally, Caesar comes to what Matt can tell is the last question, just by the way he asks it, and how he repositions himself in his chair. "So, Matthias. Tell me something. Rumor's going around that you're forming an alliance with the mysterious District 13. It's sort of a strange district to be forming an alliance with. Their odds aren't supposed to be very good, especially with the male tribute's score of 1, which is the lowest score any tribute has ever received in the entire history of the Games. Tell me...what exactly made you want to team with them?"

"His eyes," Matt says without thinking.

Caesar looks shocked, but rebounds quickly. "That's quite an unusual answer. I've never heard of a tribute teaming with another tribute based solely on eye color. But then again...maybe it was his eyes that led you to see the rest of him...and you liked what you saw. After all, District 13 is quite the eye candy, as we saw at the tribute parade, isn't it?"

The audience cheers. Matt relaxes now that Caesar has kept him from looking too stupid in front of the entirety of Panem. He knows his parents are probably watching the television at their home, shaking their heads in embarrassment for him. He doesn't blame them.

The interview ends as the crowd erupts into their last round of applause. Caesar and Matt shake hands, and Matt feels nauseous as soon as he leaves the stage, the adrenaline gone, his normal, everyday feeling settling back in once again. Well, the everyday feeling that he's had since two weeks ago, when he was first reaped, and which hasn't let up since – more of a constantly terrified feeling than an average everyday feeling like he had back in District 5.

"You did great...except for that part at the end," says Agrippa. "I'm not going to lie to you. That was weird."

Matt shrugs one shoulder before the nauseating feeling becomes too much and he leans to the side and vomits all over his beautiful sparkling pitch-black interview outfit.

He's rushed off to the infirmary. It takes about half an hour for Matt to stop trembling. Agrippa's fretting over him the whole time, which sort of doesn't really make sense because he thought she had already written him off. But maybe she's holding out a little hope for him, like maybe he'll manage to pull through. Maybe not win, or even come in the top eight, or even the top twelve...but maybe he won't die first. Pull something off that will make everyone think twice about doubting him.

"There's nothing wrong with him," says one of the medical team. She looks very, very confused. "He's not even suffering from stage fright. His blood pressure would be abnormal if he was...and his brain waves would reflect it. He's in the same mood that he's been in for the past two weeks. This is something else, and it's not showing up on the-"

"Shut up," Matt mumbles, too weak to speak much louder. "Andrew's on TV."

The television in the corner of the room is still broadcasting the live interviews. District 13 is up next, and the camera is following Andrew, who is dressed in a sparkling tux that glows red with the biohazard symbol. He doesn't look any different, and yet, he looks so dangerous Matt is halfway afraid of him. Of course, it's hard _not_ to be afraid of Andrew when he looks like this. So silently powerful. It's terrifyingly intoxicating.

Andrew makes his way across the stage, his face set in serious mode and his mouth in a thin line. Caesar stands up, greets him the same way that he did with Matt, and motions for him to sit in the chair next to him. Andrew hesitates, but does.

The beginning questions and comments are all obviously designed to get Andrew to loosen up. This is strange because it always occurred to Matt that Andrew was _supposed_ to be quiet, deadly, and serious. That was how Matt first saw him and it was sort of Andrew's trademark behavior by now. That was what Caesar was supposed to play on in interviews, how the tributes normally acted, and that way when they were being watched in the Games, they wouldn't slip up and the sponsors wouldn't be suspicious. But Caesar's doing the exact opposite here, trying to make Andrew into something he's not, at least not around the general public. Matt's got the feeling he's one of the only people who's ever seen Andrew smile.

Andrew's not cracking, though, and Matt feels his own mouth lift into a tired smile. He feels so weak, so exhausted, and not from doing anything in particular, but if Andrew's determination isn't inspiring he doesn't know what is.

Caesar finally gives up trying to make Andrew crack and laughs it off with a joke about the nerves getting to some of the tributes. Everyone must know it's a thinly veiled excuse, though. Andrew hasn't really been nervous the way the other tributes have the entire time he's been in the Capitol. This interview is nothing to him. It seems almost like the interview is _beneath_ him, Matt realizes as he watches the quiet boy with the beautiful eyes.

The last question that Caesar asks is about Andrew's mother.

Matt's definitely surprised. He would have thought that it would be a parallel to the last question _he _was asked, about their alliance. But Caesar hasn't even mentioned it once. The interview host leans towards Andrew as he asks the question, his face softening in sympathy.

"As some of us know, Andrew Detmer, your mother unfortunately passed away when you were younger. I understand that she and you were very close."

Andrew's gripping the sides of the chair. The camera doesn't zoom in on it, but Matt can see the way his knuckles have turned white. Only a person really studying Andrew's body language would be able to pick it out. Andrew nods once, confirming Caesar's statement. "Yes," he says deadly low, "she and I were very, very close."

Matt has a feeling _close_ isn't even the word.

"I was wondering...there must have been a time during these two weeks when you thought about her reaction to your reaping and, of course, the fact that you were going into the arena. She would definitely have been devastated once your name was called out, and it would probably be torture for her waiting for these two weeks, knowing that you would have to participate in the Games. After all, it's such a horrible sacrifice for the districts' past wrongs. I wanted to ask...what do you think she would have said to you, had she been present at the reaping and at the short meetings afterwards?"

He's, of course, talking about the meetings between the tribute's family or friends, whoever is closest to them, which only lasts about thirty seconds to a minute. Matt remembers his parents, how his mother wouldn't stop crying and his father wanted to break but couldn't, he had to be strong for his son. He wonders if anyone was there for Andrew. He wonders, with a slight shock like a punch to the heart, if _anyone _was there for Andrew. His mother's dead. Does Andrew have a father that met him in the Justice Building and wished him luck? The way Andrew seems to be so hardened, Matt doubts it. His heart doesn't recover from the mental punch to it.

Andrew does not want to answer that question, Matt can tell that much.

Finally, he says, "She would have told me 'You're stronger than this.'"

Matt remembers how Andrew told him in the dream a few nights ago that his mother used to say that all the time, that it was pretty much his motto. The punch turns into a knife that twists itself deep inside of Matt's heart valves and stays there. He feels like he's going to vomit again.

But he doesn't, because Ceasar stands up and shakes Andrew's hand and the crowd cheers and Andrew staggers about three steps towards the wings of the stage before he puts a hand to his head like he's got a migraine and then he vomits all over the beautiful polished floor.

It's organized chaos after that. Caesar makes another joke, gets the audience chuckling a little. A cleanup crew comes in. Peacekeepers flank Andrew from each side and grab each arm and Matt thinks that's a little unnecessary before he sees the camera get a perfect shot of Andrew Detmer from District 13 with blood oozing from his nose.

And the feedback starts in Matt's head.


	8. Chapter 8

That's it. That's the end.

It's the last thing Matt sees before the Games relating to any other tributes. There's a few days of eating and a few days of Emery sneaking prideful glances at him because she knows she's going to kill him and then suddenly, he doesn't quite know how, he's in the room below the arena, the one where his stylists will give him their last advice, but when he steps off the elevator in his arena uniform – standard-issue black-and-grey track pants and somewhat-loose jacket – there's no one there. At first he thinks it's got to be a joke, they're probably just hiding somewhere, but after he searches the entire premises of the room he discovers that they're gone. He's sure they're _supposed_ to be here, but for whatever reason they're not, and he suddenly gets a sinking feeling. Because he knows why they're not here.

The Capitol is throwing him to the dogs for associating with District 13. And he is going to die.

The realization hits him and he wants to sit against the wall and bury his head in his knees and stay there until he dies of starvation. His legs are weak. He can't breathe. Black spots dance in front of his eyes.

He walks over to the elevator. And it rises.

The first thing he notices is that it's dark. Not dark like night-dark, more like day-obscured-by-something dark. It takes his eyes a second to adjust, but as they do, he sees leaves. Leaves everywhere. Leaves attached to plants attached to vines attached to the ground. They grow so far up above him he can't make out the tops and they cover the sky to make it dark.

_Jungle._

He's a little relieved at first. Jungle means moisture, and where there's moisture, there's probably some sort of tools to make electricity, and he knows a few things about electricity. But he also knows that there's the agriculture district, District 11, who have some experience with plants and orchards and vines and so on, and of course there's the lumber district which, although possibly not having any experience with jungle plants, still has grown up around wilderness and will be able to find their way around.

That's when he realizes there are other tributes in the circle with him.

It was easy to block them out at first. To concentrate on the strengths he will have in this arena. But as he replays the whole thing in his mind, the entire point of the Hunger Games, his ears tune in to the breathing of the other tributes, and he scans the circle around him. Every single tribute looks tough and ready to kill, no matter what district they're from, and Matt is very dizzy and very afraid and he's got this overwhelming sense of horror that floods his veins and numbs his fingertips and _please don't let this be happening oh god oh no I don't want to be here please anything but this anything but this let me go please I'm begging you_-

"_Shut up."_

The voice isn't his. It's Andrew's.

Matt tracks the tributes around the circle until he finds Andrew, almost on the opposite side but not quite. He's not looking at Matt, not giving him any hint that he's speaking to him, but Matt knows. It's definitely Andrew's voice inside his mind. There's just absolutely no way he can reveal himself to the Capitol.

"_Relax. It's gonna be okay. But it won't be if you keep panicking like a chicken with its head cut off. Listen to me. You see the Cornucopia, right? I mean, obviously, you do."_

Matt stares at the metal fixture in the middle of the circle. Andrew's just to the right of it, over one tribute on his metal plate. Around the Cornucopia there are all sorts of weapons, ranging from short-range to long-range, and supplies and tents and something that might be food. Matt was never sure what he was going to try and get out of it. Some sort of weapon, he guessed. It would be smart to get food too, though.

There are forty seconds on the clock projection surrounding the hologram.

"_Okay, now I'm not gonna be able to get much. So. Your job is to grab yourself a weapon or two. That's it. I'll get the rest. Don't worry. Just grab something for yourself. And then I'll figure out what I'm going to do after that. Weapons. One or two. No fighting. Head straight for the wild. Got it?"_

He's not sure what to do, so he just thinks the answer 'yes' in his mind. Hopefully Andrew can read it.

He's not ready when the gong sounds.

There's the silence right afterwards for about a nanosecond. Matt stays on his plate and watches as the other tributes race towards the Cornucopia, and he's numb. He thinks about lying down on the ground and letting the other tributes have their way with him, keep him from having to die of starvation or poisoning or dehydration. But even though those three ways are not favorable ways to die, he doesn't want to run into a tribute and have them hack him to death with an axe or slit his throat with a knife or impale him with a spear-

_Andrew._

Andrew's running across the field, his senses heightened, the veins in his fingers pumping blood faster than he's ever remembered, his mind giving him a million commands a second. Go left here, right there, duck, and there's an enemy tribute right next to you, he's gonna try and slash you with that scythe he picked up, and you dodge easily, just swing right under and make him lose his balance. He stumbles but rights himself and Andrew lets him even though he could easily have snapped his neck. But _theysaidno theysaidno theysaidno._

So he doesn't.

Andrew watches the tribute look at him with wide eyes and then the tribute runs off to try and find some sort of shelter, a place away from the bloodbath that's taking place at the Cornucopia, and Andrew can see seven dead tributes on the ground already and the Careers looking smug and born for this. But he's not scared. He's never really been scared, honestly, just frustrated and angry and hurt all at one time and he wants to go home why can't he go home

He runs for the jungle with blood all around him and slicking his arm from an experience he doesn't remember.

_Matt._

And Matt sees Andrew and he wants to ask why because Andrew said he had it and he decides to just follow the directions anyway because it's all he can do, really. He dives in without really thinking about it and he snatches a knife and a small pack so he can at least survive and there's screaming and blood everywhere and as he turns around a tribute falls to the ground dead and the tribute that killed her is right there grinning and it's Emery.

She's got some kind of fancy razor in her hand and she lunges at Matt.

He's not prepared. He's standing there one minute, heart beating fast, and then suddenly it's beating even faster as he realizes that the pointer finger on his right hand isn't there anymore and is in fact on the ground and he's bleeding and he stands there in shock.

And he runs.

He runs to the jungle and Emery doesn't bother stopping him. She's bloodthirsty, yeah, but she'll come back for him. She'll make sure that his death is slow and painful as a consequence for choosing to team up with District 13 and of course for being such a weakling that she wouldn't be able to team up with him even if she wanted to. She'll probably skin him alive in front of Andrew. That would win tons of points with the Gamemakers and the sponsors. The Capitol will go crazy.

Matt doesn't get fifty feet into the cover of the jungle before he collapses and shoves his mouth into the wet dirt and screams bloody fucking murder.

He's hyperventilating as he raises his head up off the ground and takes a look at the damage. With shaky movements he holds his hand up so he can see it. It's lopped off at the knuckle, the skin slicked crimson and the wound itself more or less gushing blood. He can see bone. He faints and wakes up a few minutes later and reasses the situation. He's got to get it closed. Too bad he has no fucking idea how to do that.

"Oh god," he whispers, "oh god, oh god, oh god." It becomes a steady monotonous chant as his panicked mind tries to figure out what he's going to do to close up the wound so he doesn't bleed to death right there on the ground in probably the most pitiful way that a tribute has ever died. He looks around and the only thing that he can see is leaves, there are leaves everywhere and dirt, there's some of that too, and so he does the only thing that he can do. He reaches up with his good hand, yanks off part of a giant leaf, and wraps it around his finger, biting his lip so hard he draws blood when the leaf touches the bone. But it's got to be some sort of healing leaf because suddenly the base where his finger used to be is feeling cold and then it goes numb. He hopes it's because of the leaf. He hopes it's not just that he's going into shock.

He faints again and wakes up what he guesses is about an hour later by the position of the sun in the sky. The leaf is still around his finger base but it's wrapped tight and he doesn't feel any sensation there. There's an intricately stitched sort of pattern to hold the leaf together. Matt knows it wasn't just coincidence. Someone has been here. Not Andrew, he doesn't think, but someone from another district who is feeling friendly towards him. He wonders what he's done to merit kindness like that. Well, either that or the leaf has been coated with poison and the stitches are holding it in. He guesses he has to take his chance and so he leaves it on and hopes to God that it's not killing him slowly.

He stands up carefully, almost using the hand with the lopped-off finger to steady himself but remembering just in time. Once he's up, he leans back against one of the giant plants, assessing the situation. There are so many of these giant bushes with the enormous leaves surrounding him that he's pretty sure no one could ever find him in here unless they stumbled in by accident. For a little while he considers staying here, but he doesn't have many supplies. The pack only contains a few bottles of water which, while precious, are extremely tempting and make him an even bigger target; a tube of some sort of medicinal bark, he guesses from the look of it, or maybe edible bark for emergencies; about fifteen feet of rope, good for strangling but only at close range; and a whistle. The whistle's useless. He doesn't want to blow it and alert everyone to his hiding spot. Why would he ever need it? Still, he fastens the whistle around his neck and hides it beneath the fabric of his shirt. If all else fails he guesses blowing it would alert the other tributes to stay away, and if he's killed he at least wants someone from the outlying districts to show the Career he's sure will get him what he or she has had coming for a long time now.

Matt takes a swig of the water but forces himself to stop afterwards and replace the bottle lid even though he's dying for more. It clears his head a little, helps him think. He slides the pack onto his back, taking care to avoid his injured hand, and slides the knife into the waistband of his jacket, letting the hilt poke out the smallest bit so he can grab it if he needs to.

"Andrew, you asshole," he mutters to himself. "Where the hell are you?"

There's silence all around him. Matt decides now's as good a time as any to explore his surroundings and so he pushes through the giant plants and comes face-to-face with a dead body.

He stifles the scream that threatens to come up through his throat. He has to use his hand to physically do it, though, because otherwise he knows he'll be unable to stop it. There were dead bodies in the Cornucopia, sure, but they were glimpses and he could barely think straight. Here is a fourteen-year-old boy from District 7, impaled with a spear, the point of it sticking into the tree behind the kid. His eyes are wide and blood drips from his mouth.

Matt knows the hovercrafts come in to collect the bodies. If that's so, then this must have been a recent kill, which means that the person who killed him must not be too far away. Matt was honestly lucky not to have been seen in his hiding spot. He's about to turn the other way, away from where he would have gone if he was the tribute, when he sees something scrawled on the boy's arm. He leans in closer, hearing the sound of the hovercraft approaching in his ears, and discovers it's a list of plants. Of course. District 7 is the lumber district and the tributes who grow up in it probably know all there is to know about the different trees and plants and such that grow in the woods around them. Matt speedreads them, committing them to memory as well as the picture and short description beside them. By the time the hovercraft appears overtop of them, he's got a mental list of plants and bark that are good for him to eat as well as plants and bark that he should stay away from. It's not the entire list, but it's a start, and Matt clears off so the craft can retrieve the tribute's body.

A full day passes with Matt having no idea where he's going. He doesn't see a single tribute along the way which he guesses he can count as lucky but also means that there's nothing of value here. It's likely they'll all be looking for water and shelter as well as food so if he's not seeing anyone then it's probably not around here, especially with the length of time it's been. They must have combed this whole area and then moved on out. He can see the Cornucopia through the trees. It's so tempting to go back there but he's not sure if someone's hiding out there, using it as their personal campout, which would make a lot of sense because of all the supplies there. If someone managed to get inside and defend their territory, he or she is pretty much set for the Games. They've got their own personal array of weapons and food and water so they're really indestructible, at least to Matt who can't fight to save his life. Or maybe he can, just not until it's in the heat of the moment. Seeing Emery, while sending him into a panic attack, had also cleared his mind for a split second, sending bolts of white-hot energy through him and into a rage he'd never felt before. Maybe if he had stayed around he could have fought her.

When the sun starts setting over the fake horizon that the Gamemakers have programmed, Matt supposes he needs to find a place to sleep. He's not really tired but he knows he needs the rest just in case he's not lucky enough to be alone next time. The trees reach for what feels like lightyears overtop of him but the bushes are at least five feet tall at the smallest and their leaves look like they can offer a good amount of cover and warmth. It's pretty warm here already, like a rainforest, but who knows if it will get cold when the sun disappears?

He finds a bush and crawls under the leaves, appearing right near the middle of the plant. It's got a cluster of berries underneath and Matt runs down the mental list of plants that are okay to eat. The dark green berries over his head are on the list. He snaps a few of them off and puts them into his mouth. They leave a lot to be desired in the way of taste but otherwise fill his stomach. Before he can succumb to eating all of them in a desperate attempt to fill his stomach he gets comfortable and tries to go to sleep.

There's someone staring back at him.

Matt doesn't move even though he wants to jump up and freak the fuck out and run away. His mind goes to the knife he's hiding and he takes a second to plan how he's going to get it out and sink it right into the other tribute's chest.

He feels horrible after doing it. The tribute is probably about two years younger than him, barely getting used to his body which is still going through puberty, and he's got these big green eyes like he's just as surprised to see Matt as Matt is to see him. They stare at each other for a little while. Matt notices as he watches that this boy is from District 3 – a tech kid. He's got some sort of tattoo behind his ear. His hair's dark, as most kids from District 3 have due to manipulation of genetics here and there just to see if they could. His incisors are genetically altered to end in sharp points. His family must have had favor with the Capitol, or else they have a friend in the Capitol who was wiling to bestow the gift on him. He blinks once, then winces, like the movement will send a weapon straight into his face.

Matt slowly, slowly brings up one hand and waves two fingers in a greeting.

It's stupid, it's reckless, and it could probably get him killed.

The tribute from District 3 waves back. A hint of a smile lifts his mouth up on one side.

"I'm Roxen," he says. His voice is almost lost in the thick air, but Matt can still hear it.

"I'm Matthias," he offers, then says, "Well, I just like Matt. I'm from District 5. We do, you know, power and stuff. District 3 does electronics, right?"

Roxen nods. He scoots over closer. Matt picks a spot he could knife Roxen if he needs to, which is really sad and he absolutely hates it. Still, what if Roxen's doing the same thing? It's so easy to want to trust someone, to believe they have your best interests at heart, but then again it's so easy to impale a young boy with a spear and leave him bleeding and glass-eyed on a tree.

"I know some stuff. Stuff that can help us." Roxen studies Matt's eyes. "You wanna form an alliance?"

Alliances are always bad, Matt thinks, because you travel with the person and you learn all their secrets but at the same time they're doing the same thing to you, and if you actually manage to kill everybody alongside your ally you're then forced to turn around and kill the very person that helped you get to this point, except now both of you know all each others' secrets, fighting styles, allergies, everything.

Which is why he's not really sure why he's nodding.

"Great!" says Roxen, a bit too loud. He notices and quiets his voice. "Listen, we're in a rainforest, right? So there's got to be a lot of crazy stuff we can hook up and do things with. You're all about the electricity, and I know about the gadgets we need it to power. Look, I nabbed this from the Cornucopia."

He pulls a small transparent disk out of his pocket and makes a twisting motion like he's opening a door. The disk lights up and expands into a replica of where they're situated, holographic and shining, with a green dot and a red dot to symbolize he and Matt. He punches something into an invisible keyboard and the red dot turns green. "That's you," he explains. "I just entered you as an ally so you don't come up as an enemy anymore."

"That thing shows you where enemy tributes are?"

"Not long-distance. Just for fifty feet or so. Still, it's pretty sweet. I'm lucky I'm the one that grabbed it. No one else would know how to open it. But this stuff? We played with more advanced technology when we were in preschool." He grins. "I know how to take one of these apart and reprogram it, no problem. If we can find stuff to build other gadgets we'll be indestructible. We'll know they're coming a mile off and be able to pick them off one by one."

There's a dull thump and Roxen's eyes go dull, his posture slackening and the grin on his face disappearing. His arm drops to the ground and the device rolls out of it, the holographic map shutting itself off so that it's just a disk, nothing more.

Matt doesn't breathe.

Neither does Roxen. But that's a little different, because Roxen's dead.

"What did I fucking tell you?" The voice sounds from right above Matt, and he can't believe he didn't notice the presence near him. They were so quiet. But then again, if someone was good at jumping through the trees, they'd be able to sneak up on Matt and Roxen easily, considering they spent a good three minutes whispering pretty loudly to each other. Whispers in close contact could definitely mask the sound of someone jumping tree to tree. Matt would be panicked at the other tribute, but he recognizes the voice.

"13," he spits. He no longer has any desire to call the tribute by his given name.

It doesn't seem like it much matters to 13, though, because there's a footstep and 13's reaching out his hand and motioning for Matt. "Come on, we have to get out of here before the hovercraft comes along. Grab that stupid disk thing and let's get going."

"I'm not going with you!" Matt rolls over and looks up through the overgrowth at 13, who's standing there above him, a look of impatience on his face. "You killed my ally! Why the _fuck_ would I come with you?!"

"Hm, let's see...because you're going to fucking die if you don't."

"I'm going to die anyway."

"Also the hovercraft uses a tractor beam so there's always the possibility that your arm or something will get caught in it and then you're going to be left with a bleeding stump."

The cannon signifying the death of a tribute goes off. Matt may not like 13, but he knows what happens when the cannon goes off. The hovercraft will be here within the minute, and as much as he hates the fact that he has to leave with the tribute that killed his ally, he hates the idea of being left with an amputated arm even more. He rolls out from under the bush, grabbing the disk, and takes 13's hand. Before he knows it the two of them are running through the wilderness, ducking in between trees and through plants and into clearings and then back out of them. He never knew 13 could run so fast.

"Why are...we running...so far?" Matt pants from beside him.

"We need to get as far away as we can," 13 replies simply, not even out of breath. Matt wonders if this kid is just really fit, because he's about to pass out from the fatigue.

He stops wondering when Matt trips over a rock, flies into the air, and is suddenly hovering suspended a foot over the ground.

"What the...what the actual...the fuck?!" he stutters, and 13 is standing a few feet away from him. Except he's not standing. He's hovering six inches or so over the ground, and his arms are crossed with a look of frustration on his face.

"I told you we had to fucking move," he says, and without another word he comes forward, grabs Matt's hand, and the two of them skim the earth, going so fast everything else becomes a blur, and he catches himself before he can pass out because he wants to know what the legitimate flying fuck is going on.


End file.
